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- [00:02]
Nick Loafer
All right, this is 10 scary good side hustles that make real money. What's up? What's up? Nick Loafer here. Welcome to the Side Hustle show. Because your 9 to 5 may make you a living, but your 5 to 9 makes you alive. Happy Halloween to you. This is a fantastic holiday. In the words of Greg Barron, it teaches kids some really valuable life skills. You get dressed, you go to work, you get paid in candy. So today we've got 10 scary good signs side Hustle, some more Halloween related than others. And to help me out is a man of many side hustles. You know him as the host of the Niche pursuits podcast from 201creative.com Jared Bauman. Welcome to the side Hustle show. Hey, Nick.
- [00:39]
Jared Bauman
This is going to be really fun. What a fun theme that we have here. And I love the list and the running order we're going to be going through in terms of some of these really cool side hustles.
- [00:46]
Nick Loafer
Well, excited as well. I'm a longtime Niche Pursuits listener, and I feel like it's a long time coming to have you on the show and obviously a lot of overlap between the two audiences. So I know we'll have lots of listeners familiar with Jared as well. Well, I want to tee this off with a side hustle that came across my desk from Ebiz Facts this year. And this, the headline was $2,000 a month reacting to horror Movies. And so this is Katherine Fogel's YouTube channel. It's called Kat Watches Horror Movies. At the time of this recording, she's over 80,000 subscribers. Started a little over two years ago. So she's two years deep into this, I assume, side Hustle project. And some of her videos, which, like, the headline is like, you know, I'm freaked out by horror movies. Let's watch them together. And it's just her reacting to these for the first time and screaming, Just getting. Getting scared. Are you a horror movie fan? I, like, cannot do horror movies.
- [01:33]
Jared Bauman
No, no. I was going to say, like, I have a funny story with my girlfriend in college and we were going to see, I think, the Ring and we were on our way. I looked, I finally was like, I don't even like horror movies. What are we doing? And she was like, I don't either. So I love this idea because this is the only way I would really watch a horror movie is. But it's with somebody like this kind of having fun with it.
- [01:49]
Nick Loafer
Yeah, I remember seeing, like, Blair Witch in. In high school. And then, you know, probably the next week going on a 50 mile backpacking trip and just, it was, it was not, I was not in a good place. So I can't do horror movies like give me a comedy any day. But so some of her videos, like, she's got her reacting to some of these older classic horror movies like Exorcist and Predator and Aliens, Silence of the Lambs. Like these have between 150,000 views and 200,000 views. And so you can plug the, you can plug the channel, you plug any YouTube channel into social Blade and it'll estimate the earnings and like, depending on the niche, there's a huge variety in YouTube RPMs. Right? But it says up to $2,000 a month just in YouTube ad revenue from Cat Watches horror movies. Plus she's got a Patreon campaign or Patreon know support cap for this with almost 300 paying members, anywhere from 3 to $10 a month and you get, you know, special bonus footage or you get inside access. I don't know what your, what their different tiers are, but pretty well monetized for a side hustle that's only a couple years deep.
- [02:47]
Jared Bauman
I was blown away in your article by how many people are paying her. I think she said her most popular tier is at $10 a month. And I'm thinking like, what do you get for $10 a month? I'm already getting what I need by watching this. And so that's the power of creating a concept, creating an idea. And then once it gets traction, there's usually several layers that can go deeper than that. This is also fun. I don't know if you remember this is going to date me. This is also a great example of taking a model that already has been proven to work. I remember in high school and college, I think watching something called Mystery Science Theater and it was a couple of guys who would just watch these old movies that were bad. That was, that was a central premise. They were like really poorly produced or terrible storylines or really bad acting. They were just bad movies. And they would just joke through the whole thing. And that was, I mean, even before the day of YouTube. But they were incredibly popular and they did this to a lot of movies in a different way. She's putting her own spin on something that was done and successful 20 years ago.
- [03:35]
Nick Loafer
Yeah, exactly. It goes back to the, the pivot and jam framework from the tropical MBA guys. You know, take somebody else's idea, rip it off, pivot it to a new niche, a new idea, and then jam, go to town and do your thing. And see if you can get a following, see if you can get some traction with that. This genre of reaction videos is a tried and true thing. You know, we saw it during the pandemic. Like, lawyer reacts to, you know, stimulus package bill, or writer reacts to this, you know, opening line of some novel by my friend Grant Baldwin runs the speaker lab. And it was, you know, him reacting to these famous TED talks and stuff. It's a formula that can work in a lot of different niches.
- [04:10]
Jared Bauman
Yeah, yeah, it. It reminds me of, like, you know, my. My nephew is young and like, he will watch on YouTube, people playing a game to both learn, but actually kind of it's like a community event, you know, watching on YouTube or live playing the game. So, like, you know, this concept exists in so many different areas. It's kind of. She's really made a niche out of it.
- [04:28]
Nick Loafer
All right, next up, podcast reactions. You don't watch. Listen to this podcast with the Wind Nick. Maybe that's my next side hustle. But that's the first one on this list. You know, making a couple grand a month, probably more when you layer on both the patreon and the AdSense from Google Views. Watching horror movies. So there is. There's a side hustle for you. Maybe you pivot that to your own niche.
- [04:47]
Jared Bauman
And she doesn't even like them. She doesn't even like horror movies.
- [04:50]
Nick Loafer
All right, what's. What's next on your list here? What. What else have we got?
- [04:53]
Jared Bauman
Yeah, so next up is pumpkin carving. I mean, it is. It is Halloween here. So why would we not at least jump into something specific to the Halloween holiday itself? And this is Mark Evan and Chris Soria, and they started manic pumpkin carvers.com and basically they carve pumpkins for. And obviously it's a very seasonal business, you know, extremely seasonal. And we'll get into some of the other things that are a little bit seasonal. Like this reminds me of Christmas lights. You know, you always see the signs as you're driving your neighborhood during the Christmas season, someone who will come out and hang your Christmas lights for you. But this, this business, they basically carve pumpkins. And I mean, I was shocked by how much money that they're able to make per pumpkin. Now, obviously they do a really good job. They're pretty good at it. They're charging like three figures over $100 high hundred dollars for some of these, and they're making a pretty good side hustle income.
- [05:40]
Nick Loafer
Yeah, this ismaniac Pumpkin Carvers.com and this truly are Works of art, like some of the stuff that they're able to create is genuinely impressive. And it's, it's somewhat depressing that it's on such a temporary medium. Like, okay, we can capture a picture of it, but like next month this pumpkin is going to rot away. But 150 to $700 per pumpkin. And according to side hustle school, they're doing 500 to 1,000 pumpkins per season. And a lot of these are going to be, you know, corporate clients, weddings, special events, like people who have the budget to spend up to $700 for a custom pumpkin. But that pencils out or estimates out to be over $100,000, maybe $150,000 for a very seasonal business. And I've got to imagine that either some other job or some other source of income going on the rest of the year, but like, hey, you know, over the course of eight weeks to cash in 100 grand doing pumpkin art, if that's something you love to do. I was really impressed with that one.
- [06:33]
Jared Bauman
I mean, you think that obviously you need to be in an area. I mean, they're in Brooklyn, I think I saw. So, you know, they can probably service the greater New York metropolitan area. That probably helps them get access to like you said, corporate and that sort of thing. But I mean, it's also seems somewhat scalable. You know, you find some people who are good pumpkin carvers and you can kind of scale up. I'm sure they're probably not carving a thousand pumpkins, you know, the weekend of Halloween. I'm assuming that, by the way. But it is interesting to think that, you know, it's actually got some scale that you could build into it if you really wanted to.
- [07:01]
Nick Loafer
Any other food related or like this temporary art thing for, you know, people will do like ice sculptures or where it's, you know, it's built just for this event, you know, I guess like a fancy cake decorating type of thing. Like a. Maybe. Maybe these guys have a corner on the pumpkin market. Like, is there another niche where you think this might work?
- [07:21]
Jared Bauman
Well, yeah, you know, it's interesting for you to bring it up. My father in law ran for 40 years, was an ice carver. That was his, that was his business.
- [07:28]
Nick Loafer
Okay.
- [07:28]
Jared Bauman
Wow, so funny you brought that up. And so yeah, he would get hired for a lot of the types of things you just talked about. And he would make ice carvings of a whole different variety of things. So he would do Eiffel Towers for French themed parties. He would do Statue of Liberty for a new York themed party. He would. So there's a lot of themed parties that aren't just Halloween related. This is a time of year where there's parties for it, but there's every time of year he would do great Gatsby themed parties and he would build ice sculptures for that. So just lean into the whole theme idea. You know, we got the fall, we got the pumpkin, we got the Halloween. But these themes apply throughout every holiday and every year.
- [08:00]
Nick Loafer
Yeah, it's just an example of like, well, here's a skill that I have that I probably never would have thought anybody would pay money for. Like, it's just a good old time to carve pumpkins. And like, hey, I got pretty good at this. And then turning, like figuring out how to monetize that, like that's kind of inspiring. Pretty creative. Now if you're looking for a little bit of guidance on, well, what, what do, what skills do I have? What could I turn into a side hustle? I want to invite you to take our 2 minute quiz at side hustlenation.com quiz and then based on your answers, I'll make some recommendations on what business models or side hustles might be the best fit for you. Now the third one on this list is kind of a creepy, crawly one. And this is Jeff Neal who is running thecritter depot.com. this is a cricket breeding and I think e commerce business where he sells live crickets to primarily reptile owners. Like people who, who need crickets to feed their other pets. And he says average. He's been doing it for several years. Average annual profits, $30,000 on the side from his day job. Crickets apparently super easy to breed, fast to breed. And then just trying to figure out the shipping regulations about selling live insects on the Internet.
- [09:06]
Jared Bauman
This one definitely threw me off. It feels like in our modern era, wow. Side hustling your way with crickets. But it makes sense. So many people have pets. I mean, at my agency we do work with some veterinarians and so I know for a fact that they call them the exotics. Right, the exotic animals. Not the cat, the dog, bird, but all these other like. So there, there is a good collection of people that have these types of.
- [09:26]
Nick Loafer
Animals and you gotta find, you gotta find food for. It sounds like he blew up during COVID when maybe the local pet stores weren't open or they weren't. I, I don't know what it was, but he has done well with it.
- [09:37]
Jared Bauman
He said he has a bearded dragon. I was kind of intrigued didn't know you could have a pet bearded dragon.
- [09:42]
Nick Loafer
Yeah, I want to say we had somebody on the show, you know, or somebody in the community who had like a bearded dragon niche site early on all about, you know, taking care of these, you know, because it's, you find a million one do and probably a site for every specific breed. But okay, I'm going to have to go a little more niche if I want to find something maybe a little bit less competitive on that keyword research there.
- [10:03]
Jared Bauman
Growing up, I had a pet frog as a kid. As the story goes, I was fairly young. We were late kind of nearby and there were all these tadpoles. And I said, dad, can I take a tadpole home? And he raised it as a frog. He's like, yeah, if you catch one, we can take it home. Thinking, I'd never catch one. I don't know how. That was my day to buy a lottery ticket. I caught a tadpole. So we raised this tadpole up to being a frog and then released him back into the same lake like six months later. But we had to go down to the pet store to buy crickets once in a while. And I remember it being quite the process.
- [10:29]
Nick Loafer
Now, marketing wise, it sounds like Jeff is relying on these like reptile forums, like good old forum marketing. Go where your customers already are while they're hanging out in these bearded dragon forums or other reptile forums. And hey, you know, you know, do you have a good cricket dealer? If not, I'm your guy.
- [10:43]
Jared Bauman
I mean, it sounds like he really started by solving his own problem and then he realized there was this need because he was a part of that community and that it's a great way to look if you're looking at what kind of side hustle you might want to go into. Like what problems do you have in your life that you might have already solved and don't realize other people have a need for it? Or what problems do you have that maybe you could find a solution for and then see if other people want it?
- [11:01]
Nick Loafer
What is kind of cool about this niche is, yeah, there's probably some initial crickets that you're going to have to buy and I guess feed. But after a while it becomes self perpetuating. Right. It's like they're just going to keep making more. And it's like we had somebody who was doing like plant propagation or selling, you know, any types of those things where it's like, okay, I bought the seed once and now it grows into this thing. And then I cut off the limbs of it and then those repropagate and it's like, it's almost this cool like infinite loop where almost zero cost of goods sold. You know, the farther down the road that you get. I thought that was really interesting.
- [11:35]
Jared Bauman
I'm thinking of like sourdough starter and like you know a lot of people like to homebrew and like, you know, I know you have your starter for that and obviously I'm not very good at any of those things, but to your point, like got my mind thinking like this kind of almost self perpetuates itself.
- [11:46]
Nick Loafer
Yeah, I think that's one of those really exciting ones. We had a guy I met last year who was selling mushrooms out of maybe a spare bedroom. I can't imagine that that room smelled very good, but it was, I want to say 800 bucks a week or something worth of, you know, mushrooms to local restaurants and farmers markets. And just keep it rolling.
- [12:04]
Jared Bauman
Amazing.
- [12:04]
Nick Loafer
All right, we'll be back with more Halloween themed side Hustles with Jared right after this. What if you no longer needed five separate apps for your business? Bank account expense tracking, invoicing, contractor payments and tax planning. I'm excited to partner with our new sponsor Found for this episode because Found is business banking designed specifically for side hustlers, solopreneurs and small business owners like you. Under the hood, you'll find one easy to use app to help manage your money, track your spending, invoice clients, and even handle your taxes so you can focus on more important things like running your business. There's no minimum balances, there's no account maintenance fees, and there's no paperwork or credit checks when you sign up. One cool feature Found calls them Pockets, lets you allocate income to certain categories like marketing or taxes or profit, which is really handy if you want to practice the profit first methodology. But you really don't want to set up a bunch of different accounts. Over 500,000 small business owners like you chose Found as their banking solution. So stop getting lost in countless finance apps and try Found for free@found.com Sidehustle. Sign up for Found for Free today at f o u n d.com Sidehustle found is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided by Piermont bank member fdic. Found's core features are free. They also for an optional paid product, Found plus, here's a quick side hustle you can do today. It's called the Substitution game and it's an easy way to score what I call reverse passive income in your Life. That's money you're no longer spending every month. That goes straight to your bottom line. How it works is you find lower cost alternatives to the things you're already spending money on. For example, I made the switch to our sponsor Mint mobile back in 2019 and haven't looked back. Mint Mobile offers Premium Wireless for 15 bucks a month when you purchase a three month plan. And all plans come with high speed and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan and keep your existing phone number along with all your existing contacts. To get this new customer offer and your new 3 month premium wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month, go to mint mobile.com sidehustle that's mintmobile.com Sidehustle cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com sidehustle $45 upfront payment required, equivalent to $15 per month. New custom customers on first 3 month plan only speeds slower above 40 gigabytes on unlimited plan. Additional taxes, fees and restrictions apply. See Mint Mobile for details. All right, we're back with Jared from 201Creative and the niche Pursuits podcast doing some scary good side hustles. And number four on this list is an AI baby picture generator. Like what is your baby going to look like? Upload your picture and your spouse's picture and it mashes them together and it gives kind of this age progression. Like, oh, at 4 years old they're going to look, look like this. This was launched by Yifan Go out of Singapore called our baby AI.com launched April 2023. Charged nine bucks for a set of AI created baby pictures. I want there's got to be like a face mash app that had been doing it. Like, I don't know if the AI angle is necessarily important here. I feel like there's been tools to do this for a long time. But by December, so six, seven months later, he has crossed over $10,000 in revenue, according to Yifan's personal site. Sold that site this year for an undisclosed five figure some and relied on Google traffic like people were typing in AI baby generator. And he was blessed with some solid SEO and came up on the first page for that. Doesn't look like he's on the first page anymore. I couldn't find our baby AI anymore. But he sold it. He moved on, built a cool little tool and was making some money with it.
- [15:58]
Jared Bauman
I mean, I have kids and I know when we were doing all this stuff while Pregnant leading up to it, they're like, hey, you want to get that 3D image of your baby and all that. I always thought it looked kind of weird, but it is your baby and there's something about it, you know, and. But they never told you what your baby was going to look like after it was born and when it was 4 and 6. I mean, it feels like one of those things that, you know, it's, it's like we talked about already, like parties, events, weddings, but also baby, like people are willing to kind of spend some money in that category. And throwing $9 at something probably for most people on a whim, I doubt anybody's going like, oh my gosh, I always knew I'd have a blonde haired kid. Like, I don't think anyone's taking it too seriously, but it's probably worth like nine bucks to people. And it's just a cool story. And how he really found a price point that seems to have resonated with enough people that he a viable side hustle out of it.
- [16:43]
Nick Loafer
Yeah, it's almost the novelty factor where you could either create it before you have a kid and then now five years later, like, hey, that was pretty accurate or that was way off. It's almost this surprise, you put it in a time capsule kind of thing. I'd be curious to see. Maybe I should upload my wife's and I and see, like, well, did it generate a kid that looks anything like ours?
- [17:04]
Jared Bauman
That's actually a good point. I mean, we have no idea how accurate this is to some degree. It's going to take years for it to, I guess, determine if it's accurate. But why not? I mean, he, he had fun with the whole thing. He's got a post on Twitter, my silly website. Our baby AI that doesn't actually solve a problem has crossed $10,000 in total revenues. I think he kind of knew it was a fun thing.
- [17:22]
Nick Loafer
Yeah.
- [17:23]
Jared Bauman
Hopefully everybody who bought those pictures thought, you know, it's kind of a fun thing.
- [17:26]
Nick Loafer
Yeah. Are there any other, you know, one of the AI side hustles would be building, you know, an internal GPT for organizations or building kind of like a customer response bot for different organizations based on the knowledge base or something. Like any other, you know, could be in this fun category or it could be in a more useful category. But like any AI assisted side hustles that you might be excited about these days.
- [17:50]
Jared Bauman
Oh man. I'll talk about it. Maybe if we have time to get into like what kind of side hustles we're working on. But one of the things I'm doing right now is repurposing a lot of my email content that I write for the Weekend Growth newsletter. I'm repurposing on Medium. And Medium's really fun because you can kind of. I've been doing that, but I've also been exploring new topics on Medium and just sharing about it. And a couple months ago, my wife and I were having the hardest time meal planning every week. And I thought, wait a second, we know our priorities, we know what we like to eat, we know what our families like to eat, we know all these details. How about I just write a GPT for it? And so I did. And so it's a GPT. And then, you know, it's pretty simple for people to follow. But I just thought a month ago, I'm like, bill, I wonder if you could sell this. I wonder if you could sell this idea of here's a GPT that's going to build your family a custom meal plan based on, you know, your preferences, your allergies, your, all the different things you want and actually give you a meal plan every week.
- [18:37]
Nick Loafer
Yeah, I mean, that's a huge pain point. That perpetual question of, you know, what's for dinner? And you know, there's companies solving it into different ways, obviously from the, you know, done for you meal kit delivery type of things down to. Paprika is a meal planning app that's been mentioned. Cook smarts we've used off and on. But yeah, if there was, you know, maybe there is this AI assisted type of thing that would be really cool to figure out. Okay, what's the grocery list? Right. You know, what are the proportions that need to go to this? Could we reuse one ingredient across two or three different meals? Like can we make enough to have leftovers? Like there's, there's a few different boxes that you could check there and, and definitely use some tech assist on that.
- [19:16]
Jared Bauman
My friend even gave me an idea on that. He read the article and he's like, you know, you could probably do it where you actually just take a picture of your fridge and you're cupboard and it kind of learns and sees what you already have. So you don't have to go buy that again.
- [19:27]
Nick Loafer
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. We already have this stuff. I like it. What's the, what's the process like, you know, to make your own meal planning thing or to make your own GPT? Like, what does that even look like? How technical do I have to be?
- [19:37]
Jared Bauman
Not at All. Not at all. Seriously. Like, we do a lot of AI implementation at our agency, but not in a complicated way. Like, you just go to the chat GPT open AI framework, and there's a whole section on GPTs, and you can create your own. It's just, It's. It's kind of the classic analogy of how to best use AI to begin with. Like, the more you give it on the way in, the better it's going to do for you. Clearly tell it what you want it to do. So you kind of have to have the goal in mind. Don't. Don't go in. Just kind of brainstorming, have the goal in mind, and then just start working in all the different things. But that's the great thing. Like, you can make the GPT, you can play around with it, you can test it, you can use it, and you can go back in and add more to it later. So you can say, you know, let me give you some more information now that I've used this for a week or two.
- [20:16]
Nick Loafer
Okay, got it. Yeah. I could upload 10 years of podcast archives and build something that would. That would be helpful.
- [20:22]
Jared Bauman
I mean, the challenge of creating a side hustle through AI is that it's going to always be changing. But the brilliance of using AI to create a side hustle, I think, is that, you know, there's low barriers to entry. Obviously, the cost for doing it isn't very high. But also, like, to your point, a lot of us can get in there and kind of, you know, use a lot of these no code solutions along with, you know, some customization in the AI model and come up with some different ideas. I mean, this guy made it work. I think he said in the shower one day for the AI baby, you know, go all the way back to the AI baby photo thing, you know, and so, yeah, it's an interesting opportunity. It's really an interesting opportunity for a lot of people.
- [20:57]
Nick Loafer
That was the original idea for this episode. Like, could I make the 100% AI episode? And I'm glad we're doing this instead, but maybe that day is coming. Be like, well, that's kind of a spooky, scary, futuristic thing. Like, could we make a Halloween episode where it's naughty even? It's just Robo Nick, but we're really here in the flesh. Very good. So that's number four. This AI baby generator making 10 grand in total revenue before selling for a $10,000 plus exit there. What. What's next for us?
- [21:27]
Jared Bauman
This one's fun. We're going to go from AI to like a little bit more of a classic idea. And this is the cotton candy vending machines. And so this is somebody who basically started with two machines inside of a resort. And so they have this kind of story about how they stopped working and etc. But basically in their first weekend, that story they talked about was $800 in revenue from a machine on a good month. Now, again, they're doing it year round, it seemed like, so summer. One machine can make anywhere from 6 to 15k in revenue. They have, I think, 10 machines now. And so they're up into much higher revenue. I mean, this is a really interesting idea because I don't know about in your neighborhood, but you've obviously got the Halloween festivals. We've got, like, my kids at their elementary school. They have their little PTA fundraiser festival. You've got a lot of the ironically, like, churches in the neighborhood that do their fall festivals. Then you've also got Oktoberfest, by the way, and that's usually end of September, early October. So specifically this time of year, like the cotton candy vending machine, you could use year round, but this time of year, there's actually a lot of, like, fall festivals where these sorts of things would work really well.
- [22:30]
Nick Loafer
Yeah. If you could rent it out for an event, because the machines themselves are maybe. Maybe a couple thousand bucks, and you have some material costs going into that. But if he's pulling in 800 bucks from one machine on one weekend he's making cotton candy, there's not that much material that goes into it. And he described there is more. I mean, any vending machine has some maintenance. You either got to go restock it or you got to go service it, like in this case. But he's like, I've got independent contractors on the ground. They make this part of their route, and they go do this. The question is always like, shoot, why didn't the resort think of this? If they're having that kind of roi, why didn't the resort just put it in themselves? But, you know, that's. That's not the business that they're in. They want to stay in their lane. They want to, you know, delegate this little extra service to somebody else. This is distinctive vending.com, if you want to check it out. So he's got the. I think he's got a balloon machine that makes balloon animals. That seems even more complicated. But again, almost no cost of goods sold like a little rubber balloon. And you charge three, four, five bucks for that. And you're doing pretty well.
- [23:29]
Jared Bauman
Yeah. He said in 2024, he's on track to make 500 grand in revenue. I mean, that's quite the side hustle. Obviously, we don't know the, you know, the net profit or anything like that. My. My wife, when she was. She was on a team growing up, and they would fundraise, and their most successful fundraiser was renting a snow cone machine and then going to a local market and selling snow cones to the local crowd. And then they would pay, obviously, for the rental for the snow cone, but they would make. They would make thousands in one day selling snow cones even after the rental and the cost of goods sold.
- [24:00]
Nick Loafer
Yeah, yeah. Selling frozen water and sugar syrup is some pretty good margins in that too.
- [24:04]
Jared Bauman
So this is. This is a good idea. And like you said, I mean, once you buy the Mach, probably some service, but if you have a place to store it, if you have, like, an area you can store it. Like, it's kind of one of these things where it's not costing you money if it's not rented out that weekend.
- [24:15]
Nick Loafer
Yeah. There's a novelty factor of like, well, shoot, I've never seen a cotton candy vending machine before, so I think that works in its favor. And you can kind of get inspiration from this stuff while you're. While you're traveling. Like, we've got a trip to Japan coming up next year. And it's like vending machine central. There's some stat, like, you know, there's a vending machine for every person in the country. But remember, you wait, wake up the first morning that you're there because of jet lag, and it's five in the morning, and our son was three months old at the time. Like, all right, buddy, strap into the Ergo, let's go for a walk. And you find these iced coffee vending machines. It's like a dollar. And you're like, yes, this is exactly what I need right now. This is fantastic. But they have vending machines for everything, even at certain restaurants. And so you take inspiration from that as long as you find manufacturing and stuff, if you can bring that to a good location. And that's kind of the. The key component is location, location, location, just like real estate. In our vending machine episode we did earlier in the year was 599 with Mike Hoffman from Vendingpreneurs. And I said, well, what's going to separate you from the five other guys knocking on the door trying to put a vending machine in this place? He's like, don't say the V word. Talk about modern amenities instead of vending. Because he's opening it up to these staffless mini market type of things. And more than just your old school vending machine type of stuff. But I think it could play well with cotton candy or balloons or different seasonal events. There's much more. The game is much broader than just candy bars and sodas.
- [25:50]
Jared Bauman
I listened to that episode. It was really a good episode. And that one felt like it was really, to some degree, you're relying a lot more on how you discuss this concept with that local place, whatever it is, whether it's what we get. In all. He talked about it in the episode, but to some degree, this one, you could capitalize on a lot of different things like local events and festivals and parties. And you could probably even going back to an idea we already shared and talked about, like, you could probably market this to parties in the area, you know, so you can market it to summer barbecues and Halloween parties and all these different, you know, Christmas parties and things that people throw. And how cool would it be to have like a cotton candy machine as the featured dessert for the night?
- [26:29]
Nick Loafer
Yeah, it would almost be like a, like a photo booth rental for this wedding for this party or something like that. But even better if you could find that evergreen location that's just going to make your sales all the time. But there's an event or a specific play there as well. So that's number five on this list. Number six is one we alluded to earlier where it's like, okay, we'll do Christmas light install and take down. But you know that that theme of decorating for holidays has been creeping earlier and earlier in the year and Halloween has become quite a big thing. We were at Home Depot with my son and they had, you know, these huge, you know, animatronics, electronic zombies and stuff. And then you get a button on the floor and watch him, you know, raise his arms up at you and make some noise. It's definitely become a thing with the inflatables and everything else to decorate your yard for Halloween. In fact, we got a little spider web up in the yard. Now, we never had anything like that as kids. We had, we had Jack O'LANTERNS on the porch. Like that was it. Turn the light on. Jack O Lanterns on the porch. You're open for business, for trick or treating. But like now it's become such, such a thing. And so this is lightupyourholidays.com they started doing Christmas lights 20 years ago. In Chicago, they've expanded to do Halloween as well, with packages start at eighteen hundred dollars. Doesn't take many houses to make a meaningful side hustle. If your packages start at eighteen hundred dollars.
- [27:45]
Jared Bauman
They are all about free design, right? So, like, there's clearly, like, you're buying something that's unique. This is probably a little bit different, at least from what I saw than your classic, like, hey, we'll hang your lights up and I show up and you've already got the lights, and I just hang them up and I move on. Which, for the record, I think that's pretty lucrative too. But this is different. This is really going for that kind of luxury feel where we're going to give you something totally unique. We're going to design something. Will click here to request your free Halloween design schedule your virtual design call to see your custom options and pricings and then reserve it. So you're exactly right. Like, if you're already doing. If you already have access to a lot of this stuff for a different holiday, like Christmas, I mean, shoot, it's such a good idea. Their website is generic enough that it's probably start off about Christmas lights. And I'm sure on November 1st, this entire homepage gets changed over to Christmas. Right? But right now it's all Halloween. Halloween themed.
- [28:32]
Nick Loafer
Yeah, yeah. And then, well, shoot, we'll take over for, you know, Valentine's Day and Fourth of July. Like, you know, there's. I mean, if you get enough customers to keep doing it. The other one that I want to point out under this category of holiday decor, Halloween decor is porch pumpkins. So you got to check out this. This woman on Instagram. Her handle is Porch Pumpkins. 34,000 followers. This is Heather Torres out of Dallas. And what she does is she. She just piles a bunch of pumpkins on people's porches. And that's me being somewhat facetious, but, you know, she makes them look really nice.
- [29:06]
Jared Bauman
Two people that have no design skills, Is that what you're implying? That's kind of what it sounds like to us.
- [29:10]
Nick Loafer
A million dollars worth of pumpkins in four months out of the year. She's got a whole. I think she has a warehouse, she's got drivers. Like, there's some logistics involved, there's some costs involved, but she's found customers doing a million dollars of revenue to put pumpkins on people's porches. There is a niche for everything. I was really excited when I found this one.
- [29:26]
Jared Bauman
I think I loved that one when I saw it because. Because that just taps into, you know, you don't have to stop at the porch. You can go and help them decorate the inside of their house. You can help them decorate their backyard. You can like people, they don't have to then buy and store and piece together a good looking design for their holiday theme. In this case, Halloween. Yeah, you can just have it all delivered, set up aesthetically put together. You can do just your porch, but I mean I would imagine you could extend into the home and you could do every holiday. You know, people like to design for the summer and the people like to design for fall in general. So there's a boy, that thing's got a lot of legs to work through.
- [30:03]
Nick Loafer
Yeah, I was super impressed. It says last year she did 900 jobs ranging between 300 and $2,000 with extra charges. Hey, you want me to take the pumpkins away? We'll be happy to do it, but we'll charge you extra for that. It was funny. We were at Trader Joe's with the kids a couple of weeks ago and this lady in front of us in line, her entire cart, no food, only pumpkins. And, and you know, maybe, maybe she's the local version of porch pumpkins of Heather. I was just, what are you going to do with so many pumpkins? But maybe she's doing it as a side business. We'll go, we'll go decorate some people's porches.
- [30:35]
Jared Bauman
And this is such an interesting, I mean we, obviously she's doing at so, at so much scale, but you could start off by just tapping your network and then this would probably also do really well on social media, you know, TikTok, Instagram, Instagram posting about this. You could probably build up enough of a head of steam just throughout the year by showing you, by showing this process over and over again, adding some personality to it. Like this feels like a business. You don't have to have like SEO skills or necessarily have a, you know, we talked about like getting your, your vending machine placed in certain places. I bet you could just rely on your network and social media to really get it off the ground.
- [31:05]
Nick Loafer
Yeah, it sounds like it primarily is social driven for her. Hey, I'm going to open up orders in July. I'm sold out by August. And now it's just time to go find the pumpkins, do the design work, set them up. I don't know. That was crazy.
- [31:18]
Jared Bauman
So that's probably where she spends most of her time, is driving over trying to find all the pumpkins she needs.
- [31:22]
Nick Loafer
Yeah, yeah, go to the buyout a segment of the pumpkin patch. And make sure they got only the good looking ones. Porchpumpkins.com you can find her over there. We've got more Halloween themed side hustles. Scary good side hustles with Jared coming up right after this. Being an entrepreneur and being able to work remotely definitely has its perks. I've recorded podcasts everywhere from Vietnam to Italy, drafted newsletters from Japan, hosted mastermind meetings from Spain, ended up being the middle of the night to get to US business hours and outlined courses in Mexico. The common thread of all of these trips though, is Airbnb. We love being able to get exactly what we're looking for in a place to stay and have a more local experience than staying in some giant hotel chain. And you know me, I'm always thinking about the next side hustle idea, the next income stream, right? And one that's at the top of the list is hosting our place on Airbnb while we're traveling. That way the house doesn't have to sit empty. We could use the income to help pay for the trip. And we've heard from several successful Airbnb hosts hosts on the show. And what's interesting is a lot of them started with almost that exact strategy, renting their place or even a spare room while they're out of town. Taking inspiration from that, you might have an Airbnb right under your nose. In fact, your home might be worth more than you think. You can find out how much@airbnb.com host that's airbnb.com host to find out how much your home is worth. All right, we're back with Jared from 201 Creative and the Weekend Growth newsletter doing some scary good side hustles. And this was a really interesting one that I found. It was selling digital clothes. And this just blows my mind because my, my son is, you know, the first thing, he gets a new game. I want to change my avatar or, you know, he's very into like what his character is wearing in, you know, whatever game it is. If it's, if it's Minecraft or it's like Nintendo Switch Sports, like, oh, I got this upgraded jacket or like, who cares? Like, I just want to play the game. Like spend so much time on this stuff. But there's a huge market around this. So this is Keisha Watson, 22 year old, selling Roblox clothes. And I did not know this was a thing, but she does freelance clothing design for some big brands who want to get their brand into this game. Like hey, where are people spending their time? They're spending some time in this game. We want to be everywhere. We want to get our clothes and designs in front of there. And, and so she'd been doing it for years and years selling her own, you know, designs and clothes. You know, it's a cool side hustle in that it's something that you create once, sell over and over again like an app or a piece of software or a piece of content. Um, but you know, $0.02 per sale. Like it was, it was definitely a volume game until she went out and started to get like freelance design contracts from some bigger brands.
- [34:07]
Jared Bauman
I think I saw that she made in her first year, which is 20, 23, over $110,000 according to like, and it was verified by, by, by cnbc, I suppose. And I mean this p. Piggybacks off. When I first saw this story on our, on our list here today, I thought it was going to be like, hey, the classic Halloween costume rental place. You know, like be a little local boutique.
- [34:27]
Nick Loafer
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like a spirit Halloween. Yeah, yeah.
- [34:30]
Jared Bauman
You know, especially if you know how to sew or, you know, you can just like, I, I was thinking in my head how great that idea is. Even not even you know how to sew. It's just like go out to all your friends on November 1st and be like, hey, can I buy all your old, old costumes you guys just got done with for like a dollar each off you. And you could just start building up a whole supply of costumes just by buying all your friends used Halloween costumes the day after Halloween. But this puts a whole new spin on it. I mean, this is all digital, so it opens up all these avenues and it also kind of highlights. You mentioned it, like using that skill set of that expertise you built up to then go out and get contracts that are outside of that. That's. That seems to be where she earned a lot of her money.
- [35:03]
Nick Loafer
Yeah, this is an interesting one. It's trying to go, you're already part of this ecosystem, you're part of this community, you know how the game is played, you know what's going to play well. But then playing that game the way you've been doing it is not going to become a full time thing. It's like you got to go higher market, you got to go find those corporate clients that really have budget to spend in a digital world.
- [35:25]
Jared Bauman
In this case, yeah, I think this is a good time to mention with every side hustle, you got to understand how scalable it is and how scalable you want it to be. And for a lot of us, we land into a side hustle and then it goes well, and then we start thinking about what's next. But you don't necessarily think about what's next until you have that first initial success. But it's a great example of, like you said, kind of going up market and not getting kind of confined by just the limitations of what she started with.
- [35:48]
Nick Loafer
Yeah, the parallel would be like stock photography shows up on a bunch of different lists of side hustles. But the people who have success doing it have thousands, hundreds of thousands of images. And okay, we're going to play this volume game. And it can work like it's passive once those things sell. But the near term thing is like, why don't I go do portraits, weddings, senior photos, family photos, corporate events, and charge 3, 4, 500 up to several thousand dollars for that event. And so it's kind of a similar play here where it's like, yeah, I can make these things and they'll sell and I can build up my portfolio, but I got to go find the corporate client. And I kind of been thinking because some people have approached, like, could we license your side hustle curriculum or could you create a side hustle curriculum? Like, who's the bigger, who's the bigger fish that already would be interested in what you know? And that's something that's kind of been on my mind lately where it's like, okay, you could sell, you know, onesie twosies or you could go license this to somebody. We had a guy who was doing a book summary service that was his side hustle. And yeah, you could sell it, you could go to the website and buy it. But like for him it was like, we're going to go to Zappos. We're going to go to these companies that have proven to make investments in employee learning, like continuing education. Like they care about this stuff. Like as a benefit of working, working here you also get access to these, you know, to this book summary service. It's like, oh, that's a. That was a great pitch.
- [37:10]
Jared Bauman
This reminds me in equal parts, like, to your point, this reminds me of a story that I heard a while back about a friend of a friend. So I don't know them, but they kind of built something that kind of reminds me of this for the Minecraft community and then, you know, caught popularity. They weren't making a ton of money off of. It was just truly like a little side hustle. More of a passion project than anything. But years later landed a job at Minecraft as a result of getting on there radar. And one thing leads led to another and so they ended up, yes, they didn't have a side hustle anymore. Now they had a job, but they were doing a job in an industry they absolutely loved and was built on the fact that they built a side hustle on it.
- [37:42]
Nick Loafer
Yeah, there's some cool stuff you can do in Minecraft. I think some friends of ours bought Disneyland, basically a Minecraft version of Disneyland where they've recreated the entire park, all the rides and probably paid five bucks for it or something. But if this guy sells Disneyland to thousands of people and it was kind of a cool something he probably wanted to create anyway. You know, it's like if you can find that kind of space to play and I think you're going to have some fun. I agree.
- [38:09]
Jared Bauman
Especially if you already are in that space anyways. I mean, shoot, what's the downside?
- [38:14]
Nick Loafer
All right, next one is one that has come across my desk a few times this year and I know nothing about gambling or sports betting. Now it's like, what do these numbers mean? Like the plus 120 or the minus? I don't know. I had to ask my friends this week, like what does it mean when it says like + 1300 or something. But the side hustle that's come across my desk is arbitrage sports betting. And I don't know, you bet on football games or anything?
- [38:38]
Jared Bauman
Nope, not at all.
- [38:39]
Nick Loafer
All right, so this will be a great segment to complete rookies. So my understanding of this is different sports books are going to have different odds on different games and the arbitrage opportunity is to find one where this sports book says the Yankees are going to win and this sports book says the Yankees are going to lose. And you find the. So you make two bets and you know, you know you're going to lose one, but you know you're also going to win one and that cancels out the loss. And you make a little bit of margin on it. Like it sounds tedious, sounds impossible to do without software. And that's why there's a bunch of software. Like, you know, I don't want to plug any of them, I can't speak for them, but there's a bunch of softwares that'll help you do this. You just have to have accounts at every different sportsbook imaginable. And I don't know how frowned upon this is if this is like just a unknown thing that happens. Like I guess they're taking Their cut or their fees and they probably don't care. But it's an interesting one.
- [39:31]
Jared Bauman
I mean if you're like a data nerd, a math nerd, maybe this is something to look into. Obviously sports betting has grown quite a bit. I was reading here, I think it was in 2018, kind of opened up a lot more legalization. I think I saw a stat in here again, 35% of Americans are betting on sports now. So, you know, growing market, growing, that sort of thing. I think you described it pretty well. Well, not. I've never been on a sporting event that I can think of in my entire life, but from I am a math nerd. Like I did kind of major basically in college and math. And so the process does kind of make sense. You know, you're kind of arbitraging different sports betting books and the way that they set lines and the way these things can change dynamically. You know, these, these numbers can change like leading up to a game or one sports book. Like somebody gets injured and one sports book looks at that differently than another one. Right.
- [40:18]
Nick Loafer
And so yeah, or they haven't all updated in real time, like there's some lag. And that's kind of my understanding is.
- [40:24]
Jared Bauman
Like, yep, or you get inside information that this guy's injured and you know, before the sports book finds out or so there's a lot of stuff there where like I can see how there would be arbitrage opportunities every weekend, every week on different sporting events depending on where you land in terms of the way your mind works and in terms of how interested you are kind of getting involved in that.
- [40:43]
Nick Loafer
Yeah, I was really surprised when we were watching, watching football last weekend. You know, there was a lot of gambling related commercials and the first one was like, you know, when you have a hunch, you want to be able to place that bet. Like right now I thought it was a joke. They were like, oh no, they're like seriously promoting FanDuel or whatever. You know what it was, it was kind of surprising. Like, oh, I guess this is a big deal and if you are going to do it, maybe there's some arbitrage opportunity. The thing with any arbitrage opportunity is like it's usually short lived. It's usually kind of a narrow window. But there's got to be some people making this work.
- [41:17]
Jared Bauman
Reminds me of the movie 21, right where you know, blackjack and learning to, if you're smart enough at a time, like you said, short lived because they've caught onto that now and casinos don't allow you to kind of get that advantage. But they were able to count cards and then use their brilliance to work the system. And that's basically like a form of arbitrage. Right. So, you know, to some degree that loophole has been closed now, but perhaps this one still reigns supreme.
- [41:42]
Nick Loafer
Yeah, I love me a underdog dog taking down the casino story. I will read those. I will watch those all day long.
- [41:49]
Jared Bauman
I don't think anybody was reading for the casino in that movie. Yeah.
- [41:52]
Nick Loafer
And maybe since this is all online, like you just, you don't have the, you know, back room brass knuckles type of risk. You know, if you. They find out you're an advantage player, I don't know, we'll throw that out there. Not, not Halloween related at all, but just something that I thought was interesting that's come across.
- [42:08]
Jared Bauman
It's the first time I've heard about this approach to it. I think it's a very interesting approach. Again, because of my mathematical background. I like the idea behind it.
- [42:14]
Nick Loafer
Yeah. If there's ever risk free profit like that, that lane tends to get crowded right away. There's probably risks, associated risks in anything, but it doesn't last forever. So it's got to be one of these, you know, get in while the getting's good. All right, what's, what's next on this list?
- [42:29]
Jared Bauman
Well, you know, kind of. We've talked about topics like this already at this point. This one is a bicycle ice cream business. It's Catherine O'Brien and she's the owner and the founder of Cream Cruiser. Now this one has a little bit of a different twist to it. So hang with it here. What she did is, yes, she created a, like an ice cream bike business where she's gonna. I think she said she started local farmers markets, she got into weddings, corporate events, college events. She just has a bike. I don't know. She actually just straight up rode the bike to it, or if she took it on a truck and it was more of a gimmick, but it's got ice cream in the back of it, you know, ice cream sandwiches and all that. I think she's making like 10 grand a month or something, she was saying. But what she then did, and this is what's kind of fascinating, we haven't had this yet, is that she then went on to make basically bike business university, and that's@bikebusinessuniversity.com and that is basically like teaching people how to start these businesses.
- [43:17]
Nick Loafer
Right.
- [43:18]
Jared Bauman
And so this is a tried and true model and she makes $20,000 per month, passive, from what it sounds like. And she said something about doubling by the start of summer 2024. At last update, got a lot of followers on Instagram. 82,000 followers. Ice cream bike lady. So she's made a business, a side hustle business out of a service. But then she's also made a bigger side hustle business out of teaching people how to do that service.
- [43:39]
Nick Loafer
The side hustles. On side hustles, one thing leads to the next. There's somebody doing this in our neighborhood. And again, you know, very seasonal Baltimore. I think she's in Baltimore. You know, it's going to be equally seasonal there. Yeah, but we always are calculating. You see that the guy comes by, you know, once a week after school when the weather's good. You see him pop by the, you know, swim meets when the community swim meets are going on and he just kind of has this rack and we're always like, what kind of, you know, the calculations, how many do you think he sells a day? You know, what kind of very low overhead. I mean, he's got a bike with like a cooler attached to it. I'm sure there's a custom build out on there, but pretty impressive that she's able to do that. And again, going after the bigger ticket, you know, weddings, corporate events, rather than just, you know, onesie twosie ice cream sales, I think is an interesting play on that too. And then the age old playbook, do the thing, get the result. And then obviously it's, you know, kind of a. I think it's sold as being like a fun, outdoorsy, money making business. It's like, Yeah, I attracted 80,000 followers for other people who want to learn how to do this. So Catherine's doing really well.
- [44:41]
Jared Bauman
I misspoke, by the way. I said $10,000 a month. She's. I look back because I was looking to see, my point was going to be like the overhead is so low, like even the startup costs. Like, yeah, you think about the classic ice cream, you know, vendor and they got to buy that big truck and you got to maintain this truck and always looks like it's about to break down and never start again, you know, and all that. But this is so much easier. Like the investment. She said she invested under $10,000 to get it going. So that was a $10,000 reference. But I mean, to your point, like, I think there's so much versatility here. Like probably driving around selling, you know, in neighborhoods is not as profitable as getting that wedding Gig, that corporate gig, you know, the summer fair, whatever it is, that's probably where, you know, you can make a substantial amount of money. It is a bit seasonal, so I do go back to that seasonality thing. Like in Baltimore in the winter. I'm wondering how much bike riding she's doing selling ice cream cones. But certainly a good spring, summer, maybe early fall thing.
- [45:29]
Nick Loafer
Yeah. It turns into the hot chocolate bike vendor or the hot coffee bike vendor.
- [45:35]
Jared Bauman
Flip it on its head.
- [45:36]
Nick Loafer
Oh, here it is. Okay. 100 grand in five months out of the year with 75% profit margins. What else could you sell out of the back of a bike? I think this is kind of first it was food trucks and it's like, well, even that's too much overhead. Right. How do we shrink this down even further? So pretty cool.
- [45:53]
Jared Bauman
Yeah, I think it's great. Especially again, like, I'm thinking about where I live. You know, I live about 45 minutes out of San Diego, but tons of tourists come here in the summer. Right. So I, I mean, you could just ride that thing up and down the boardwalk. I don't even know if you'd have to have a permit. Up and down all day. You could probably make a killing.
- [46:09]
Nick Loafer
Yeah. These are the little, the little ideas that I absolutely love because it's like, doesn't cost you anything to get it started. And then hopefully, I mean, do your due diligence on what kind of regulations and requirements. You're going to have to be a food vendor. But pretty quick to get off the ground. And selling ice cream on a hot day is a pretty easy sell. So doing good. The last one on this list, number 10, is. I don't know how real this is. This is a real life wedding crasher that's been written up in a few different sources. One recent one was in the New York Post. This is Ernesto Rainares Varrea. He lives in Spain and he is a professional wedding crasher. For a base fee of €500, roughly $550, Ernesto says he's going to. I'm going to come and I will crash your wedding. I'm going to pretend to be the bride's long lost lover and, you know, run away with her. And I guess the primary target, the target audience is the bride who's got cold feet and, like, wants to break it off in a really dramatic way at the altar. That seems really interesting. But Ernesto says he's booked up through December.
- [47:16]
Jared Bauman
When I first saw. Saw this, I really thought this was going to be an ode to what when you say, like, wedding crashers, like, hiring someone to be, like, the life of the party. Right? Like, if you want your wedding to be awesome, hire someone who, like, super outgoing, super funny, super loud and will show up and, like, dance the night away and get the party going. Right. I didn't expect it to be somebody who would show up and crash your wedding in with the intent to break it up. And so, yeah, there's enough details in here. It feels pretty legit. But I was like, there's no way. But he says he's hooked up and he'll basically show up. And, like, for a cool €500, you can just kind of guess if that's the way you want to go about solving your wedding. Cold feet. Like, I guess that's a thing. And, like, this is proof that you don't. You only need a certain number of clients. You don't need to sell to the entire world.
- [47:58]
Nick Loafer
Yeah, there's. There's a market for anything. And we talked to Jen Glantz from Bridesmaids for Hire. Is this a real thing? And she's like, yeah, you know, people will hire me to be their maid of honor to help, you know, kind of be a shoulder to cry on, to be a friend for them on this day. And she built a really interesting business around that. So the part that got me was like, is this for real? Was at the end of the article, he says, I get paid extra if I get hit. Like, if the groom or the groomsmen are, like, punching me or slapping me on my way out, I get €50 for every extra hit. So obviously, I don't want to get hurt, but I kind of want to take my time, too, because that's where I make my money. It's like, is this for real?
- [48:38]
Jared Bauman
I mean, I would think maybe he put that in there just as a job hazard.
- [48:42]
Nick Loafer
Like, true.
- [48:43]
Jared Bauman
If I have to go to the hospital to get, you know, stitches, like, that takes away from my €500 I earned. So I've got to upcharge every time I get hit. And then he's like, well, as long as I can play that card properly, like, don't end up in the hospital. Maybe put away a couple hundred more euro on the way out, you know?
- [48:57]
Nick Loafer
Yeah.
- [48:58]
Jared Bauman
I was a wedding photographer in my first career. I did that for a decade. And so I have definitely seen the other side of that, which is people showed up at weddings, and we actually proved it. One time, I shot a wedding on a Friday night, and then my business partner shot a wedding on a Saturday night and we were editing the weddings the next week and we saw the exact same person in the exact same outfit at one wedding. And the next wedding we actually went and asked the bride and groom when we saw them next, like, do you know that person? They're like, no, no, I don't know that person. I thought that was me. My. And both of them had the same story. Like, no, I didn't know that person. Same venues in town. So there are definitely people who, who crash weddings. I didn't know anybody was hired to crash weddings.
- [49:33]
Nick Loafer
They're just there for the free food, drinks.
- [49:36]
Jared Bauman
Yeah, yeah, I think so. The social aspects, I mean there's some nice weddings out there, but, but to do it professionally, that is next level. I will tell you. That is next level.
- [49:43]
Nick Loafer
Yeah, there's, there's a niche for everything. There's a side hustle for everything. Jared, this has been awesome. These are 10 scary, good, loosely Halloween related, some more than others. And appreciate you hanging out and, and sharing this with us. So you got the agency, you got201creative.com, your host in the niche Pursuits podcast. You got the weekend growth newsletter@weekendgrowth.com newsletter, you've got the Amazon Influencer business. You got a lot of stuff going on. A man of many online side hustles. What's, what's got you excited these days?
- [50:12]
Jared Bauman
I do, I do, yeah. The, the, the, the marketing agency is my day job. Uh, that's what I do. But I, I just feel so stimulated and I love doing side hustles. I love trying em. I love seeing what works. I love just getting that inspiration. You mentioned it. I write about it every week at the newsletter and that's free if people wanna just see what I'm doing. Uh, what am I working on right now? Yeah, Amazon Influencer. I've been doing that for about a year and a half now. That was really successful out of the gate. That one really caught fire. And so I share about that all the time. And we're coming up into Q4, so that's the fun time on Amazon Influencer.
- [50:38]
Nick Loafer
How many videos have you made?
- [50:39]
Jared Bauman
1250 now. I'm actually going to go make some videos right after this podcast. The house is empty. My wife and the kids are gone. I'm going to go make some videos right after this podcast. So I'm trying to get to about 1350 before the black Friday sale season hits.
- [50:51]
Nick Loafer
Okay. And is this just. You can't have bought 1300 things off of Amazon. Like where are you getting the stuff to Film about.
- [50:57]
Jared Bauman
So, yeah, we buy probably a good amount on Amazon, but we bought nowhere near 1300. But you know, first off, you can make different types of videos about a single product. Maybe you have like several cell phone cases. So you can make a video about your cell phone case and you can kind of compare your old cell phone case with your new cell phone case and that's another video. Right.
- [51:13]
Nick Loafer
Okay.
- [51:13]
Jared Bauman
You can also get creative and go to neighbors houses and film. You can go down to your neighbor's house, you can like sit there. You can use your coffee machine for a couple minutes, couple, you know, maybe an hour, however long it takes to figure it out, and then make a video on that. I have not done this. I've done it once where I was at an area Airbnb and I actually had used a lot of the stuff in the kitchen all week. And then I was like, oh, last day I made a bunch of videos about all the stuff I'd use in that Airbnb. But a lot of people will actually make that their model and go out to Airbnbs and rent them and then film all the products there.
- [51:38]
Nick Loafer
Okay. Okay, nice.
- [51:39]
Jared Bauman
So that's how you can get more videos than what you have. Usually you want to start with at least a base of stuff. Hopefully you have some stuff, but you don't have to have bought on Amazon as long as it's available on Amazon. So that's another key factor.
- [51:49]
Nick Loafer
Right. Do you find that it is just a factor of creating the content, you know, and building that library area of a thousand plus videos that that's what drives revenue, or is there other specific tactics that go into it?
- [52:03]
Jared Bauman
Honestly, no, not really. Not that I've figured out. I mean, it is a side hustle for me. So I haven't like sat there and. But they don't give you many metrics. They don't tell you a lot. It's really about, you know, you're trying to make a good video and make as many of them as you can. Because I found no correlation to the ones that end up making me most of my money. And it is the 8020 rule, by the way, like almost everything else in life, like totally. I don't make the same amount off every video. I make 80% of my revenue or more off of probably less than 20% of my videos. And so it's really just about taking those swings at the plate to try to figure out which ones you're going to connect on.
- [52:34]
Nick Loafer
Yeah, this is. We started doing some of the kids like Lego videos And trying to make them, you know, their first passive income on the Internet is like, give them the. I remember giving them that 20 bucks, like, over Christmas season last year, and they'd be like, cool. Like, pause right there. You just made passive income on the Internet. I don't think you have an appreciation for, like, how cool this is, you know, and how easy this was for you. So I will. I will back you up that the influencer program is probably the easiest money that I've ever made online. Have uploaded very, very few this year, and I've been looking at 669 bucks so far this year, and I probably have less than 50 videos live. So it's. It works. It's legit. It's. It's a really cool, really cool program that they've got. Like, anything. Does it stay easy forever? Does it last forever? Probably not. But if you can get accepted into it, they still haven't said, like, what level of social following you need. They just make sure you apply with your YouTube or Instagram or they want some link to a social platform, even though you don't have to post any of your videos on that social platform.
- [53:33]
Jared Bauman
Correct. Yeah. And it's also based on engagement. So it's like this combination of how many followers you have, but they want to see accounts that actually get some engagement. But a lot of us have Instagram accounts that have, you know, over a thousand followers just from friends and family and work colleagues over the years. Years. And, you know, so you can flip that into a business account. It doesn't really change the outward, you know, account itself. And a lot of people will have success with something like that or maybe a TikTok account they started. So it's worth applying. It's definitely worth applying.
- [53:58]
Nick Loafer
Very good. Well, check him out. 201creative.com John Dykstra gave you a plug last month, so I appreciate that. And weekendgrowth.com newsletter to stay in touch with everything that Jared has got going on. If you liked this episode, I know you get a kick out of our annual Thanksgiving series of creative side hustles. I think there's a Spotify playlist for that. If not, I'm happy to make one and link that up in the show Notes. This coming out, this coming Thanksgiving, I think will be our seventh annual on that ten creative side hustles. Like, the most interesting stuff that I've come across over the course of the year. Now, that's kind of the shotgun approach. So if you're looking for something a little more curated, what you do is go to Hustle Show. You answer few short multiple choice questions and it'll build you a personalized playlist of 8 to 10 recommended episodes based on your answers. Again, Hustle show for that. Big thanks to Jared for sharing his insight. Big thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone. You can hit upside hustlenation.com deals for all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place. Thank you for supporting the advertisers that support the show. That is it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you're finding value in the show, the greatest compliment is to share it with a friend. So fire off that text message to somebody who loves creative business ideas, somebody who loves Halloween and making money. There's got to be somebody on that Venn diagram of yours. So I appreciate you sharing that. Until next time, let's go out there and make something happen and I'll catch you in the next edition of the side Hustle Show. Hustle on.