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The Side Hustle Show
641: Starting Over? Podcasting, Newsletters, Competing in a “No Click” World, and more (10 Questions with Nick)
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- [00:01]
Nick Loper
Starting over. We're talking podcasting, newsletters, how to compete in a no click world, and lots more. What's up? What's up? Nick Loper here. Welcome to the Side Hustle show. Because making extra money never goes out of style, we're diving into the listener mailbag this week to answer your burning side Hustle questions, starting with Gary, who asks, starting over. How would you grow an audience today? Is it too late to start a podcast? And how long did it take to start making money from the show? Well, Gary, starting over. I still think podcasting is a viable path to building an audience, and it's a really valuable one. There is something to the consistency and convenience and depth of relationship with it. For as a listener, I get used to hearing the same voices week after week. And I can do it while I'm driving, while I'm walking, to pick up the kids, while I'm working out. There's a certain level of intimacy to that. And while there are certainly more podcasts, greater competition, and truthfully, better competition, level of production, all that jazz than there was 10, 11 years ago, the world is only as saturated as you make it. I remember Jonathan Mendonca on the show from Shoes Fi years ago. He said, look, if you can't be first, be different, right? So they weren't the first personal finance podcast, but they were the first, you know, personal finance podcast focused on the fire movement. So you can't. You probably can't be first anymore, but you can still be different. This is from episode 436 with John Lee Dumas. Is there such thing as being too niche? Like, I've seen some successful podcasts. We had a guest on recently who had like a laundromat podcast, like how to run a laundromat Business. And he was like, it's done surprisingly well. And I said, well, why do you say surprisingly? And he's like, because it's a laundromat podcast. But I'm curious, have you seen anything where it's like, I don't know if that's a big enough market to try and serve.
- [01:41]
John Lee Dumas
It is impossible, and I mean impossible to be too niche. People always go the other way because they're scared, they're fearful, they have their own self doubts, and they think, I just need to be able to serve everybody. I want to resonate with everybody. I want to just create a podcast that just inspires other people to inspire other people to inspire other people. And that fails because that is a weak, pale imitation of other successful podcasts that are out there that are actually doing something specific. And that's why people lose. Why people win is because they say, I'm going to create the best solution to a real problem. I flipping love that laundromat podcast idea, because guess what? He is the best laundromat podcast in the world. He's also the worst. He's the only. And that's why you win in this world, because you become the best. However that is, if that takes you being the only to be the best. That's giving you a chance to win, because people will beat a path to your doorstep. If you're number one, if you're number two, if you're number 10, if you're number 200, you will lose.
- [02:41]
Nick Loper
Yeah. Where can you be the only? That was a line that stood out to me from the book, was like, hey, when you started Eofire, I was the best daily interview podcast for entrepreneurs. I was the worst daily interview podcast for entrepreneurs. I was the only. And that's an interesting place to play. And you might be thinking, well, shoot, that's easy for John to say, he started in 2012. But I would start with getting really clear on what niche I'm going to serve, who my ideal listener is going to be, and what's the best way to speak to them. What kind of content are they really going to value? Now, early on, I set out to create the show that I wanted to hear. Look realistic ways to make money, ideas. You can start in your spare time, light on the theory, heavy on the tactics. Now, marketing wise, it's still the game. And whether this is a podcast or whether, you know, whatever thing you're building, it's still a game of getting in front of your ideal listeners, readers, viewers, customers, clients. Right where they already are. Maybe it's on Instagram, maybe it's on other podcasts, maybe it's on LinkedIn, maybe it's on YouTube because of the friction involved. Specific to podcasting, I mean, I gotta. I gotta go find my podcast app, I gotta find your show, I gotta find the specific episode you're talking about, and then I gotta find the time to listen to it. It is a really challenging medium to grow, but super, super worthwhile and rewarding to do it. One of the accidental growth tactics that worked for me was becoming known as the side hustle guy in the personal finance space. And I got to give credit to Philip Taylor, the founder of fincon, for pulling me into that world where everybody was talking about investing and saving money and paying off debt. And initially I was like, ah, I don't know. I'm talking about entrepreneurship. I'm not in the personal finance world. And it took a while to see that, well, earning extra money is a natural extension of that more traditional personal finance content, which led me to guesting on a lot of those types of podcasts and growing listenership for the side Hustle show. So the question could be, well, what other shows have an audience that would be receptive to your message and how can you be of service to those hosts? And if you're going to focus on video first, you've got much better search and discoverability on YouTube than you do on most podcast apps. Plus, you have the added benefit of YouTube as this recommendation engine where if people like your content, the algorithm is likely to show it to other people that it thinks will like it as well. So I'm always trying to step up our video game while staying true to the remote recording lifestyle. I talked to some people at fincon. I know I almost exclusively record in studio in person in New York, and it's like, I just like staying at home. I mean, that's great for you, but, you know, that's just the logistics involved. That's not for me. Now, within the first year, you asked about the monetization side of things. I started selling a private mastermind group through the podcast and through the, you know, modest 700 person email list. @ that time it was the, you know, huge, huge price tag of a hundred bucks a month for three months. But when those first applications started to come in, it was a really exciting validation that this could be a thing that people were willing to pay to connect with me and with their fellow side hustlers. I don't think I would have gotten any applications had it not been for the relationship formed with those early listeners through the podcast. And as far as sponsorships, the show started to attract more serious sponsorship dollars around year three and has continued to see pretty strong demand ever since, with some sponsors sticking around for years in some cases, which is really rewarding to see. Now I've got to turn more sponsorship requests than we can accept because it's either not a great fit for the audience or it's not a brand I've used or could see myself using. But Gary, thanks for that question. That's a little bit of a brain dump on how I would think about growing a podcast starting over. Today. Question two came from Kathy, who says, I don't have any online presence yet, but I'm wondering, would it be worthwhile to start a blog or YouTube channel, for example personal finance and lifestyle, but targeting the Australian audience because everything is pretty much written for us readers. I'm pretty good with words, I just don't know where start overwhelmed with information. I'm 50 years old trying to restart my career. Well Kathy, I love this question. Personal finance and lifestyle for an Australian audience is probably a bit too broad. Even personal finance for Australian women is probably a little bit broad, but it could work. So even better might be helping Australian women over 50 prepare for retirement in the sense of personal finance and lifestyle. Like that could check the personal finance and lifestyle components to really set people up for a fulfilling retirement or a second act now building traffic to a blog is more challenging than ever, but that doesn't mean you should neglect having a website. I still think it's really important to have that as a home base. But similar to the first question, my efforts on building content and connecting with other people would be on other channels to start out, right? Maybe that's YouTube, maybe that's LinkedIn or X or Threads or Instagram. And since you enjoy writing, there are lots of content first or written first content channels that are less follower based than ever and more algorithm based which is helpful for new people starting out. It's not that you don't need to have a hundred thousand subscribers if you have a small but engaged following early on, it means your work can get seen by a lot more people than just those who follow you if it resonates and it starts to get picked up by the algorithm. So I would probably pick one platform, let's say LinkedIn and really focus my efforts there, learn the best practices, start to build a following and start to have those one on one conversations with those followers on their biggest pain points and struggles. Those are going to guide future content, but also what kind of products or services that you eventually create to serve them. This is question three. Brittany says she's started a free email newsletter for artists in Southern California and in three months I've grown it to 4,500 subscribers with a 65% open rate. My current obstacle, I want to start monetizing the newsletter. My problem is I have no idea what a reasonable price is to charge sponsors or even how to approach potential sponsors. So first off Brittany, incredible work. That's some really positive early traction. 4,500 subscribers in three months. It took me probably over a year like to get that many. So really cool work and I really like the local niche angle here. So newsletter ads typically sold on a CPM basis as a cost per thousand impressions, occasionally on a cost per click basis. And that's some platforms will help to do that, but really the rates can really vary depending on your niche. So you've got a newsletter targeting, you know, exclusively hedge fund managers or, you know, Fortune 500C suite executives. You probably are going to command higher rates than one targeting broke college students, just as one example. Now you could even begin with experimenting by including affiliate links to products that you like. Now here's how Ryan Steddon described his advertising options for Naptown Scoop. This is his local newsletter focused on Annapolis, Maryland. And this clip is from episode 615 of the side Hustle Show. But curious how you have it priced today. I think you mentioned we have five different ad slots per day, I guess, probably based on placement and visibility and structure of those ads.
- [09:40]
Ryan Steddon
Yeah. So three different kinds. The bottom kind has three each day. So top one has your logo at the top, a picture up to 150 words. It's the first ad. Unless we have a headline story, it's the first thing in the newsletter. So probably about 60% of the time it's the top thing anybody sees. Then in the middle we call it a feature ad and that has 100 words. A photo and that's right in the middle. And then right near our live music section at the bottom, which is our most popular thing, we have three ads we call baseline, which are text only, 70 words and a headline and a link. And everybody, all these can be linked. It's funny now, at the beginning those ads I sold that web design guy were headline ads or what, a very early version of those. And it was $500 for six of them. Now an individual headline ad, if anybody wants to buy one, is $812.50 and it goes down with volume. If you're going to buy 12, then that unit cost goes down. If you're going to buy 24, that unit cost goes down. If you're going to go buy 48, be crazy and spread those over the next two years, the unit costs will go down. Or we have two advertisers that do do that every single week. They just pay a lot of money. But the prices are very, very different from when we first started. Everything is really just pulling out of thin air. How much does this cost? $500 for six ads. Everything was just thrown out.
- [11:00]
Nick Loper
Is there a rule of thumb for X price based on every thousand subscribers or something like that?
- [11:06]
Ryan Steddon
I heard a rumor back in the day that Morning brew was charging $70 per thousand. And so I roughly based it on that and it's actually still around there. Our top ad, it's very loosely based on that. I don't think it's loosely based on that anymore. Maybe it's just worked out that way that it's still on there. Once it started stabilizing, I used to change prices every week because we would be adding hundreds of subscribers every week. And I'll be like, I just sold an ad to you for 200 bucks for 800 subscribers and had a really good run of Facebook ads and now we have 1,600 and I'm not going to charge $200 again. So I would change it every single week. Then I started changing it, I think every month and then it was every couple months and now I just change it every year. And it's not on any kind of, oh, we have this many more subscribers. It should be this much more. Now I'm basically up it on inventory. If we sell out then, and it's like we sell out really easily. I know it's too low, if it's harder, but we still sell out. I'm like, okay, we can do a little bump. If we're not selling at all. Thankfully this hasn't happened yet. Then maybe we stay the same or even worse, go lower. Now it's not really based on any kind of formula. It's just based on feel of, oh, last year we sold all these way too easily. Okay, we'll double the price. And then we sold them all out again, but it took longer. I was like, okay, cool, that's probably a good number. That was two years ago. We doubled it last year. We just went up by, I think it was 20% this year probably just go up by 10% and maybe stabilize somewhere around there and just upgrade the prices every year by 8 to 10%.
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Nick Loper
Is it most common to sell a multi month package like you're going to be featured eight times over the next three months? Is that how it's typically structured?
- [12:38]
Ryan Steddon
I like to sell long packages. We have people who sign on to be on there every other week for two years. We have people who are on there every other week for one year. We have some people who are just pretty seasonal, but they're on for the same six months and they'll sign two year deals for those six months. I just like that because it's easier and also it ups your average client value. There's a, I can't say too much about this, but there's a website that I want to buy right now because I think I can do a lot better. I think it's a great opportunity. And their average, they have way, way more visibility than I do, way more impressions, way more uniques. But their average customer value is like one fifth of mine, which is why I think I can buy it and do really well with it. But I'm just always trying to increase that. I have a dentist client right now who's on just once a month and our standard is really twice a month. So they're on once a month. But they've been killing it. They've been doing really well with it. So rather than trying to go sell a new client, it's way easier to just sell someone who's already selling with you and increase that customer value.
- [13:40]
Nick Loper
Increase their frequency.
- [13:41]
Ryan Steddon
Yeah, I went to them and said, hey, do you guys, it's been working out pretty well. Once a month I'm going to juice it and you'll get a better unit rate and you'll be in there more and you've already made your money back and then a lot because I know you told me how many clients you got and I'm kind of guessing what your average customer value is worth based on industry comparisons. And I think I'm probably pretty close. And so it's just way easier to make those sales than to go out and cold call a new person and get a new one. So I'm always trying to increase customer value and one way to do that is just raise prices every year and nobody has ever canceled because of the increase.
- [14:14]
Nick Loper
Now for Ryan, he also mentioned including a little sponsor this newsletter link at the bottom of every edition. Something that would be pretty easy to add if you don't have that in there already. And then aside from that, a lot of community outbound sales to try and drive long term partnerships. The other thing that he mentioned that might be worth considering is offering what he called category exclusivity. Like we can only accept one real estate agent at a time and we would love for that to be you again. Episode 615 in your archives all about growing and monetizing a local newsletter. Really cool episode. I'm going to be back with more Q and A on marketing monetization and the death of the click 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 in 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 side side hustle 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 offer 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 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 data 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 three month premium wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month, go to mint mobile.com sidehustle that's mintmobile.com side hustle. Cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at mint mobile.com side hustle $45 upfront payment required equivalent to $15 per month new customers on first three month plan only speeds slower above 40 gigabytes on unlimited plan. Additional taxes, fees and restrictions apply. See Mint Mobile for details. Question four is from Dustin who asked hey, I'm looking at starting a consulting business. I want to register a domain so I can have a professional email. What's the best place to do that? I Might a very simple website in the future, but no time soon. Basically looking for a good email service and something that I can utilize maybe with Gmail or on my phone. Well Dustin, I think this is a pretty small investment for that little bump up in perceived value. So you're on the right track here. So to better explain what Dustin is talking about, it would be like having an email address like dustinmartconsultinggroup.com as opposed to smart consultinggroupmail.com it makes you look more legit, especially if you're targeting a customer base who would notice that sort of thing. And for more, you know, quote unquote blue collar operations, I probably wouldn't let that be a barrier to you getting started. Like Nick's Gutter Cleaningmail.com would probably work just fine over Nick Nick's Gutter Cleaning.com now I still prefer the second one but my customers probably don't care. They just want their gutters clean. Right. So the first step here would be to register the domain. You can get that through any domain registrar. Godaddy Pork Bun is the one I've been using lately. No affiliation there. It's just, you know, I like the service and you can get email service either as an add on to that domain registration or if you like you said you eventually want to build out that website, some hosts are going to include it in their hosting package. You can get a free domain with hosting registration at bluehost. We've got an affiliate link for that. But if you don't want to build that website yet, you can just register the domain. You can add on email. I think Pork Bun charges something like 24 bucks a year for that. Now the caution is if you email me from dustinmartconsultinggroup.com I'm likely to go to smartconsultinggroup.com just to check out your website. So even building out that simple placeholder brochure style website could be beneficial. But of course my online behavior might not be like your target customers. And then I think there's you can probably do like six bucks a month for Google Business suite to have you know that domain or that email inside of the familiar Gmail interface. Now I just set up my side Hustle Nation email to forward to my personal Gmail inbox early on and I've actually never changed that. So that's another option as well. Question five was from Patricia who asked is there anywhere on your site that covers ideas that disabled people or people with mobility restrictions can do? So Patricia, at the moment there is not though it is on our keyword list of future content to create. And actually what I kind of want to do is the, you know, every side Hustle ever like airtable database where you can filter by the time required the earnings potential, whether it's online, whether it's in person. I think that would be a fun project to try and build out, but like again, another one that's kind of daunting to get off the ground. But in the meantime, just think about any remote or online side Hustle I think can be done by somebody with mobility restrictions. And we do have several resources on those on the site that I can link up in the Show Notes. Just follow the Show Notes, link in the episode description. It'll get you right over there. So ideas might include virtual freelancing, virtual consulting, anything you can do over the Internet, virtual assistant service, content creation, business digital products, print on demand proofreading, freelance writing, paid market research. Lots of options there. Now one famous example in the blogging world or in the online business world is John Morrow. He runs a site called smartblogger.com paralyzed from the neck down from birth with spinal muscular atrophy and still went on to build a super successful online business earning $15 million. According to a recent LinkedIn post of his he uses speech dictation, like speech to text Dragon Dictation. I think he's got a special computer mouse that he operates with his lips. Really inspiring guy. Instead of focusing on the things he can't do, he focused on what he could do and he's helped a lot of people in the process. Smartblogger.com is his site and really inspired by what John has created and the impact that he's had. Question six came in from Ruth, who asked I'm struggling to launch my small sewing classes for kids. I run them out of my home. I've advertised on Peach Jar and my local Facebook pages. Does anyone have any suggestions for me? Well Ruth, this sounds like a really cool, cute side hustle and to market it, I think you're on the right track with local Facebook pages and maybe even local parenting pages, school groups or homeschool groups. We just did a local workshops episode. Chloe Winstanley, it's episode 634. She was hosting jewelry making workshops. Definitely worth a listen if you missed that one. And her business was a little bit different because she's targeting adults and she would go to a community center venue, not, not trying to run those out of her home. But she mentioned having success marketing on Facebook and how One ticket sale in her case often led to three or four ticket sales because people would want to come with their friends, so maybe testing with a limited ad budget might be worthwhile. Now a few other people in the side Hustle Nation Facebook group mentioned targeting homeschool parents, which I think is a really good fit and also a tight knit community where you might start to see some word of mouth benefit. Now to go a little bit broader, this reminds me a little of the after school Programs episode we did a few years ago where my guest May got approved by her local school district to host these after school arts and crafts enrichment sessions. That is episode 289 in your archives. A little long way to scroll to get down to that one, but definitely worth a listen if you're into that sort of thing. It was a multi week class where the parents would pay, you know, 100, 150 bucks and she could take 15 to 20 kids at a time. So the effective hourly rate ended up being really strong. And if she did Mondays at one school, she could do Tuesdays at another school, Wednesdays at another school and really only have a couple hours a day of work. So that could be an interesting option for you. And a lot of these schools already have had an approval process in place where, you know, they were already hosting like the Lego after school program or the CHESS after school program. And so it was kind of like throwing your name in the hat there and following their guidelines. Now one final idea, like some people mentioned in the Facebook group as well, is to take the sewing class and put it up on Outschool. This is a platform that specializes in small, safe online group classes for kids. That's your target audience, right? The biggest benefit is you'd open up your market from just your local area. I don't know how big a town that you're in to being able to serve kids from all over the world. This would be the buy buttons strategy of going where the cash is already flowing to tap into some existing demand rather than trying to create it from scratch in your local area. Outschool has millions of users. I think it would be perfect for something like this. I definitely encourage you to check out the episodes we've done on Outschool, starting with Teacher jade in episode 442. But we'll link all of those those up in the show notes for you for question seven. Chris says, my wife and I have been podcasting since 2018 in the special needs parenting niche. We've built up an audience but we haven't made any money. We're considering creating an online program to better serve our listeners now. Chris, I admire the longevity of sticking with the show that long. And even if the financial rewards haven't been there, I know creating the content, building connections with listeners has been really rewarding for you. The first thing that comes to mind in this case is to simply bring your listeners into a supportive community similar to what Megan Champion did for her podcast, also in the parenting niche. Her show is called on the Hard Days and here's how she described creating and structuring that membership in episode five. 24.
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Megan Champion
It turns out there is no community for mothers raising neurodivergent kids out there. There are specific things kids, moms of kids with autism, for example, there are little niche things, but just in general, parents who don't have a diagnosis for their their kids, but they are really struggling internally with their child's behaviors and challenges and struggles. There is no place for them to gather and meet each other. And so that's where my membership community was born. And it's called Mothers Together and it has completely changed my life and the trajectory of my business.
- [25:36]
Nick Loper
Well, let's talk about that membership. That's great. Looking out in the world that this is the thing that I wish existed. It doesn't. So I'm going to be the one to build it. And oh by the way, for the last year I've been building this. Over the last six months I've been building this network through one on one conversations and then one to many conversations through the podcast. So you said, okay, we're going to build this thing. It's called Mothers Together. And what's so what happens, I guess inside, what's the value proposition for a mom saying yes, I want to join?
- [26:05]
Megan Champion
Yeah, absolutely. So in Mothers Together it is a monthly membership. It is a support group style membership. And so they basically get three, three pieces. There is a forum, first of all that I created. It is off of social media. It's not on Facebook. It has its own app. It's the Mighty Networks company and it's awesome has its own app. And on this forum moms can ask questions, ask for advice, share resources. And it's by category, which makes it sort of stand out from maybe Facebook. For example, people can search by age of child to connect with other moms of teenagers who are neurodivergent. They can search by location if they want to find moms who might be living near them that they wouldn't know about, by diagnosis, by behavior, by there's A million different ways. Right. So they can connect in the forum. But that's not my big selling point. That's just sort of a little extra. The main piece of Mothers Together is the support group part. And so what happens is when a mom signs up, I send out a follow up email with some questions. Where do you live? How old is your child? And most importantly, what do you the mom, what do you need? What are you looking for for support? What are you not getting right now that you wish you could have? And I will take her information and I will personally match her with other moms going through a similar experience. So it's basically like I'm personalizing these groups of moms based on the needs of the moms. Yeah, it is like a support group. On the one hand, you know, we do try to meet on Zoom weekly, that sort of thing, but it's way more than a support group. We found out very early on that the moms were so over the moon, excited to have met each other and connected on that personal level that a once a week meeting was not nearly going to cut it. And so we decided we need something a little different. We're using mostly the Marco Polo video messaging app. There's text threads and the forum has a chat feature, but mostly Marco Polo to check in with each other in our little groups constantly, daily, sometimes multiple times a day. How was that doctor's appointment you had? Jump on and let us know. We're here for you. We're thinking of you. I had a really tough morning. I need to vent. What would you guys do in this situation? It's personal. These are friends. You know, there's no judgment. This is a completely safe space to share what you're struggling with because everybody in your group group is going through the same thing. And so there's really a magic in that, in that community piece. And I have obviously had some success, which I'm so grateful for because the moms are so thrilled to have found each other and it's really awesome.
- [28:23]
Nick Loper
Yeah, this is actually kind of an interesting one because typically a membership business is going to be Content plus Community. And I haven't heard you say anything really about content and advice and lessons, like I don't want it. It's more about support and acknowledgement and just like you said, venting early on. I just need somebody to listen versus preaching from on high. It's a little bit different from some of the other membership guests that we've had on Content plus Community. Sure, there's a forum, but it's like, it's more about access to expert material and stuff, like behind the scenes type of stuff. And then this personal matching service somewhat maybe common in the entrepreneurship space. Oh, we're going to form these little mini mastermind groups or so called based on interests or location or what business you're working on, but kind of similar here based on the age of the kids, what you're struggling with, maybe where you're located geographically and it's kind of. Am I understanding the structure of what happens behind the paywall?
- [29:21]
Megan Champion
Yeah, yeah, pretty much. We do have one additional little bonus where I do bring on a guest expert once a month and we do a live Q and A on Zoom. So there's that little bit of advice piece, content piece. Mostly the content on the forum is created by the members, right? So I am not pushing forward. Here are some great recipes for picky eaters. Here are some sensory activities for sensory sensitive kids. I'm not doing that. We are doing that. It's their membership as much as it is mine. And so if somebody has a great idea or something that's worked in their home, they will push it, you know, push it out into the forum in different categories for the other moms. And so it's kind of like we're all building this, this plane as we fly it together. And that's kind. That togetherness piece is where the, I think the magic happens again.
- [30:09]
Nick Loper
That was Megan champion from episode 524 of the side Hustle show in the on the Hard days podcast. Question 8 is how to compete in a no click world. So this comes from several listeners dealing with the fallout of lots of Google updates over the course of the last 12 months. And so Rand Fishkin, you know, formerly of Moz, you know, he posted this really thoughtful article last week which he opened by saying surveys, studies, analytics, they all show the same thing. Getting traffic on the web is harder than ever and it's getting worse. Much faster in the last two years than in the decade before. Site owners are faced with two options. Compete for the scraps Google and the other platforms provide or play the game differently by engaging in zero click answers. Content and influence. So what does it mean to become a center of influence? The downside is it's obviously more work than just anonymously cranking out SEO content for Google and cashing in on ad revenue and affiliate commissions. It means creating a multi platform presence with the goal of owning your topic wherever somebody might be looking for it. Whether that's Amazon, whether that's TikTok, whether that's Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, wherever. Now, I wouldn't start by trying to be everywhere at once. I would take Robert Farrington's advice from a couple years ago on the show where he said pick two one has got to be your website, your email list as your home base, something that you have control over. And then next start with one external platform where your target customer is and you can learn to play the game and build that trust and influence. Here's how Kellen Klein from the Savvy Couple put it in episode 605, you.
- [31:40]
Kellen Klein
Have to build a brand, something that me and you have done a really good job of, where people are actually going out and searching our brand and they're going into Google and they're giving that best signal that people are searching for our brand. So I think a lot of the times, 80, 20 rule, I think 80% of the sites that have built a really good brand and they are publishing good, high quality content all the time, I think they are definitely riding the wave and they're staying above these updates and the companies that are more niche sites and they're not really building an entire brand with social media and with an email list and with a YouTube channel. I think that those are the ones that really got hit, specifically ones that were just publishing a ton of AI content and not having any expertise or different sharing their experience or authority or trust within their articles and making them better than the next one. I think that's super important to really understand the user's intent when they're going to search these terms and solving it the best way possible possible.
- [32:30]
Nick Loper
The drawback I see to a social first approach is this age old problem of building on borrowed land. You're still subject to the whims of social media algorithm changes and yes, you can roll with those and adapt like we all have to do. But the real key is to bring people into something you have more control over, namely your email list. Which is why you see so many Twitter threads or LinkedIn posts that end with that call to action. Hey, if you like this, this, make sure to grab your free bonus. If you like this, here's the template to help you do it on your own. If you found this helpful. I share a story just like it every week on my newsletter. Sign up here. Now, I recently hit 20 years in online business, which hopefully makes me sound older than I am. But truthfully, over that time the only constant is change. Tactics don't stay the same for long. But the broader strategies of serving your audience of Diversifying traffic and income sources of building your own email or customer list. Those have stood the test of time and have to imagine will continue to do so. I recently had the opportunity to hear from Joe Decina. He is the founder of Spartan Race. He came and we hung out at this recent Mastermind event where he's like, come by. We'll do this early morning workout with Joe. And he's the founder of Spartan Race. That's all I know. Going into it, I'm like, how muddy are we going to get? Like, what kind of workout does this guy have in store for us? And I was like, well, it was climbing staircases and doing burpees. It was not that bad. But as he was talking to us, a sound bite that stood out for me was if you want to win at marketing today, you have to be everywhere, all at once, all the time. And if you have the time and energy and team and budget to do that, go for it. But I think that puts a lot of unnecessary pressure on new entrepreneurs. Instead, I think you can pick a lane that suits you and suits your audience, get it firing, and then layer on additional channels as you go. Not all at once. The sound bite from Joe that I did really like though, was the couch kills more people than swimming with sharks. Get started, stay started. And quote is not necessarily about the couch or swimming with sharks, but that one I really did like. Question 9 asks, can you really get paid to be an online friend? So, a little bit of background. This question comes from the popularity of a site called Rent a Friend, which had a viral moment a few years ago almost purely from the novelty of it. Like, wait, you can really be a friend for hire number one. And then number two, people are really paying for friends. So the short answer is yes, this is something that you can make money doing. And there are a few sites that facilitate this type of relationship, sometimes online, but more often in person, like for local travel recommendations and companionship while you're in a new city. The longer answer is, your odds of making money as a general online friend are probably pretty low. It's really hard to find success stories of people actually making money on these sites. And based on the, you know, estimated traffic data I could find from Ahrefs and others, it looks like the supply of available friends, the people wanting to make money, far outstrips the demand of people looking to hire an online friend. Now, that said, we are more connected than ever before, but there's also data to suggest we're lonelier and more isolated than we've ever been as well. So there's definitely a need for connection and companionship. You just might need to get a little more niche and a little more creative in how you're providing it. Maybe it is teaching English lessons online, maybe it is providing customer support online. One of my favorite examples is Devin Ricks from Ms. Devin. We've done a couple episodes on her outschool side hustle of hanging out and playing video games with kids. Most recently she was on episode 611.
- [35:59]
Devin Ricks
I started teaching for outschool.com and started by teaching English creative writing classes. But I've always loved video games so I just put my video game twist on it. We would do descriptive writing but Zelda or like punctuation but Pokemon. And then my students just kept asking me for more classes on how to play the video games or help them with places where they were stuck. And so I started creating social clubs where kids could come and game in a safe online space together. And it just continued to grow and continued to grow. And when you and I connected like you said, I was making around 4,000amonth. And since then I have hired on 14 teachers to teach with me and last year we broke six figures.
- [36:37]
Nick Loper
Devin is someone who legitimately is getting paid to be an online friend. Super inspiring and fun business again. 6:11 if you want to check that one out and learn more. But a creative example of making money and it's just a little more niche than just offering up an ear to listen to and a face on a webcam on some of these other, you know, virtual friend type of websites. Question 10 this came up a bunch of times on my recent trip to fincon. People asked what what keeps you coming back here and what's next? What are you working on? So super blessed to have a network of incredible friends and peers and colleagues. It's the people that keeps me coming back to fincon. This was my ninth year in person and it is my my once a year chance to have a density of conversations packed into just a few days that is unlike anything else for the rest of the year. It's kind of hard to describe, but because everyone has the shared experience of trying to build something online and spread a positive message online, you really quickly get beyond the cursory small talk of work and weather and family and what new Netflix shows you're into and into the world of goals and visions and challenges and obstacles and big ideas. And I would challenge you to take stock of some of your recent friend conversations and ask whether they're in category One, the more cursory small talk category or category two. The deeper, more meaningful variety. There's definitely a place for both, but the challenge is to surround yourself with more people with whom you can have the second type of conversation and have it not be weird. But that's the but. It's that and the creative energy that comes from it that keeps me coming back where people are really open about sharing what's working, what's not working, what new tools and tactics they're using now. I always walk away with more ideas than I truthfully know what to do with. And to be fair, you might have to try several different events or groups before you find your people. I went to a bunch of affiliate conferences early on and never quite found that same level of connection. Now, as far as what's next, what are you working on? I'm reminded of a line from Joe from Stacking Benjamins from a talk that he did years ago. He said, look, I'm embarrassed by the worst work I did a year ago and a year from now I hope to be embarrassed by the work I'm doing today. It was this call to keep getting better. And you can see it, Joe, just talk about a guy who loves his craft. I don't know where they're at. 1500, 1600 episodes of stacking Benjamins and just an incredible job with what they've done and what they built. I was at a Mastermind event earlier in the year and my friend Chandler Bolt Chandler runs self publishing dot com. He always get the question what's next? What are you working on? And he's like the same, just more and better. And I was like that really, really resonated with me. There's always this pressure to be working on the next big thing, but it's okay. If the current thing is working and you're happy doing it, that's okay too. So the same, just more and better. I mean this show is where I love spending my time and the creative constraint that comes with a publishing deadline of every Thursday and every other Monday. Hey look, we got to come up with something compelling to publish now. I left fincon. I left the event. Super grateful to still get to play the game. To have been going to those things for nine or 10 years to be able to get paid to do work I love. And I couldn't do it without your support. So thank you so much for tuning in, whether you're a first time listener or a longtime listener. So what's next? It's continuing to do my best to help people find legit ways to make more money. It's fallen in love with that problem, right? So big thanks to everyone who submitted questions this week week. Big thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone. As always, you can hit up side 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. 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.