← The Side Hustle Show
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- [00:00]
Nick Loper
You probably already know that Airbnb can help you earn some extra cash when you're not using your home. Maybe you're traveling for work, you're taking an extended vacation, or you're just snowboarding someplace warmer. But here's where it gets interesting. You don't have to do all the work yourself. You can tap into Airbnb's co host network. This is a team of local pros who handle the nitty gritty so you can focus on what matters most. Think of it like outsourcing for your side Hustle. These professional co hosts help with everything from creating a killer listing that stands out to guest communication and even on the ground support. You provide the space, they handle the details and you get paid. Personally, I'm a fan of income streams that don't require constant oversight. When I'm traveling for work, I'm at a conference or a mastermind, or if I'm on vacation, I'm trying to be present with my family. Here's a way to add an extra income stream without having to be glued to my phone the whole time. When you're ready to get started, see how much your space could be worth and get connected with an awesome co host@airbnb.com host. I called this the easiest online side.
- [01:06]
Tyler Christensen
Hustle ever, but it's still a viable path to extra income. We're about to find out what's new with the Amazon Influencer program. Since we first covered it a couple years ago on the show, this is the program that allows you to upload short product review videos and earn a small commission when somebody buys the thing on Amazon after watching your video at that time. Pretty low production quality, relatively low competition. And the best part, you didn't need to drive any of your own traffic. You just kind of sat there on the product pages and if somebody watched it, you earned a little commission. Very much set it and forget it. Probably as close to passive income on the Internet as you can get.
- [01:44]
Nick Loper
To date I've earned over $2,000 as an Amazon influencer.
- [01:50]
Tyler Christensen
Very, very part time, very passive, but which is great. But that pales in comparison to today's guest who's earned over $130,000 as a lately around $5,000 a month on the side from his day job, which I think is pretty cool from creator side income. Tyler Christensen, welcome back to the Side Hustle Show.
- [02:10]
Thanks. Great to be back. A lot has changed since we last chatted a couple years ago, so it's fun to be back talking about Amazon.
- [02:17]
Yes. So Catch us up now, whenever the proverbial fruit is as low hanging as this, it tends to get picked over. At least that's the trend that we've seen over the last 10, 12 years of the show. But catch us up, what's been going on in the Amazon Influencer world for you?
- [02:31]
Well, so the Amazon influencer program is largely the same as it was two years ago. The idea that you can just film a video on your phone of some product and upload it to Amazon. Like you mentioned, very low hanging fruit. You can, at least in theory, do that in two or three minutes, take a one minute video, upload it, tag it and you're done. Which means if you work really hard, you could do hundreds a month. Two years ago, hundreds of videos a month would result in thousands of dollars a month in earnings for the influencer. That is no longer the case. However, I agree with you that it's still the easiest side hustle that's out there. No startup costs. Really easy. You don't need to have fancy equipment or anything like that. You can't make quite as much money now, but you can still make really good money. So that part hasn't changed.
- [03:21]
Is that a factor of more players in the space or commission rates getting cut or visibility of the videos getting diminished? What's going on there?
- [03:29]
Yeah, so there's some speculation that there are caps or that Amazon might throttle you if you have too many videos. There are a lot of theories out there on that. What we do know for sure is there are definitely way more players in the space. And so you just have more competition when you put a video up for a product, if there's already 20 videos for that product, it's just less likely that someone will see yours. Whereas two, three, four years ago you could review almost anything and yours would be the only video up for that product. And that's just no longer the case.
- [03:59]
Okay, so maybe prioritizing the ones that are newer products, maybe they don't have a ton of videos out there yet just because, well, even if you get even, if everybody cycles through evenly, you're still only going to get one twentieth of the of the views. And it may not even be that case where maybe they're going to prioritize ones with better watch times or better conversion rates or whatever it may be.
- [04:21]
Yeah, the, the challenge with that is you want trending products, you want products that are popular right now that are bestsellers. But of course, if they're bestsellers, then a lot of people have them and make Videos. So there's a sweet spot where they're popular but not too popular or new but not too new and you kind of have to mud through. There are some software programs that can help with that. There are some extensions. I don't use any of those things just because I've been in this long enough. I've kind of found my own system for finding products. But the cool thing is, even with things that aren't bestseller, I got a sponsored video this week where somebody sent me a power station and it cost $3,000 on Amazon. So while they're paying me to make the video, they're paying me $80 if a single person buys one of those power stations. So it doesn't have to be a huge seller. But if I get one sell that's like another 50 bucks. And if it does do really well, if that video helps people make decisions and a lot of people buy the power station, then potentially that's a nice source of income moving forward.
- [05:21]
What's a power station?
- [05:23]
Like a generator, you know, you just plug stuff into it. But if your power goes out in your house, you can plug in your refrigerator, stuff like that.
- [05:29]
Okay, that was one of the themes from the last conversation was focusing on the higher ticket items because you're only going to make 2 to 4% of the sales price. And so if you're selling a $10 thing, it's going to take the same amount of time to review it as it is going to take to review the $100 thing or the $200 thing. And so all else being equal, focus your energy and attention on the higher price products.
- [05:50]
Although you can still make good money with low end products especially if you're making a lot of videos. So if you have tons of videos out there and they only make $0.06 each time you make a sale, you know, enough of those added up other investment. It adds up.
- [06:04]
Yeah, some of my best sellers kind of are on both ends. One is the Green Bin Food Compost bags which is probably a $10. I don't even know. It's like hey, you know, we've tested.
- [06:15]
Nick Loper
A few of these.
- [06:16]
Tyler Christensen
These are genuinely the best that we found. This is the, this is the one you want, right? It's a no brainer. And then on the other hand it's like we have like an electric car charger thing in my parents garage. He was like well, might as well shoot a quick video review because it's like a several hundred, several hundred dollars item. And so that one is on the higher end where when it does sell, it's a much bigger commission rate. But so those are a couple examples of high sellers for me.
- [06:40]
Now, one of the new things that Amazon introduced just in the last six months is. Well, actually it's been around for longer than that, but they've started promoting it is the Creator Connections. Are you familiar with that?
- [06:50]
No. This is definitely one area that I wanted to talk to you about. School us about Creator Connections.
- [06:56]
Okay. Creator Connections is really interesting because I think what Amazon is trying to do is they don't want to pay more money to influencers, and so they're getting the brands to pay that. And the way that they're facilitating that is they've made this new area where if you're in the influencer program, you can go through a directory of products that brands have signed up for and they have a budget. And what happens is if you have that product or if you purchase that product, or in some cases the company will send you that product for free or even pay you to review that product, instead of getting the, the typical commissions from Amazon, which are very low, half a percent to 4%, the brands will pay up anywhere to 20% for commissions on, on sales of their products. And so one of the things that has helped me lately as there's been more competition for products, is finding things on those Creator Connections. And, and most of those things were things I reviewed anyways. So it's simply a matter of checking the box to say I want to be part of this campaign. And that's all you. Literally all you have to do is just say accept on things you've already reviewed and then you can link the video that you've posted, whether it's on social medias or on the Amazon platform, and then anytime there's a sale on that, you get a higher commission. So that has helped with creators quite a bit. But then for me, I had one product that I found, we bought it over the summer thinking that it would be a good Christmas present for our kids. And it was a higher ticket item and paid a 10% commission instead of a 1% commission. And so every time it would sell, we would make 30 or $40. And that one review has resulted in about $5,000 in the last six months. So you can, you can really strike it rich if you find the right.
- [08:43]
Product from one review. You think about the hourly rate of that. So where do I go to find these Creator Connection invites or possible products and brands?
- [08:53]
Yeah, so if you're in your associates, whatever that's called, where it shows you all your information, your reports and stuff.
- [09:00]
I'm in like a creator hub right now.
- [09:02]
Yeah, there is a tab that you can pull down. You have to be on the off site portion of the tab, so you can log in to either your on site profile or your off site profile. If you get onto your off site and just scroll down the tags, then there's a little button for creator connections. Now I do believe that they did send out invitations, but anyone that's in the influencer program can join just by finding that tab and signing up.
- [09:30]
Okay, well, I'll dig around and be.
- [09:31]
Nick Loper
On the lookout for that.
- [09:32]
Tyler Christensen
I think that's a really interesting angle. Now, has Amazon, since we last connected, provided any additional guidance as to the influencer program application requirements? Like, you know, size of the following because they want you to plug in your Instagram, YouTube, TikTok. Like they want to have some level of social following, but they never at least at that time said, well, the minimum threshold is 2000 followers or something like that.
- [09:57]
They haven't said anything. They're as mysterious as they've always been. However, just through Reddit groups, Facebook groups and others, there is a general sense of what's required and its engagement. So rather than having a real big following, 10,000 followers or whatever, you can get in with as few as like 50 followers, as long as there's legitimate engagement that they're commenting on your videos, that it's not just friends and family, but that you're putting something out there and having people engage with it on social media. So that seems to be what's working best. The other good news now is it used to be really, really hard to get first accepted into the program as an influencer, but then you have to upload three videos and they have to be approved. And a lot of people were getting their videos rejected during a time of growth for Amazon, but over the last six months it seems like they've lessened the threshold for that. And so a lot more people are getting in now just with the same requirements that we've always had, that you just have some kind of social following. A lot of people are doing it through TikTok right now, but you can do it any platform and the videos aren't being rejected as often that that threshold. To actually put something for on site commissions, you have to have your three videos approved and people are having more success now with that.
- [11:16]
Okay, and when you say on site versus off site, on site is what I, I think I'm most familiar with was like the video is shown on the product page, somebody watches it, they ultimately purchase, you get a commission. What's the offsite piece of that?
- [11:29]
Yeah, so on site is the thing. When we talk about the Amazon Influencer program, that's all on site. Offsite is what we've had for years and years with the Amazon affiliate program where you simply create an account with Amazon. Anyone can do it. There is no requirements. You just have to go through the process, Google Amazon affiliate, and when you sign up for that, they'll make it so you can get a link for any product that you have. And like if you have a YouTube video, you put that link on your YouTube video, it directs people to Amazon. So that's why it's coming from off site.
- [12:04]
I got it.
- [12:05]
And you make a commission. And actually the commissions for offsite are better than onsite commissions. You get a higher percentage, plus they have better incentives. My little brother's crushing on off site. So while his on site has gone down, he's actually making more than ever through Amazon because his YouTube channel's done better.
- [12:24]
Okay, so in your case, this would be the reviews ofcool stuff YouTube channel. That's like the primary off site driver.
- [12:29]
Yeah. And you can do it on any social platform. So if you're a big Instagrammer or a Tiktoker, you can put those links anywhere and drive traffic to Amazon.
- [12:38]
Got it, got it. You just have to go in and kind of pull that specific tracking link versus it's kind of automatic in the on site version.
- [12:46]
Right.
- [12:46]
Okay. How many videos are you up to now?
- [12:48]
I have about 2,300 total videos. So I did about 800 last year, which was down from the year before where I did about 1200. So I was doing 100amonth. I've kind of. Now I'm only doing about 50, 75amonth.
- [13:01]
Okay. Yeah. For the sake of comparison, I did 8 all last year, but still made 700 bucks. Like it was really, really passive.
- [13:08]
Yeah.
- [13:08]
So it's almost this volume game and you can play with these different metrics of like, well, are there already other videos out there? Is it a high price, probably to try and prioritize your work there, but it does seem to be. I mean, there's an 80, 20 to it, but a bit of a volume game where the more videos that you have, the wider a net you can cast, the more likely you are to pick up some views and some sales.
- [13:29]
Yeah, well, and the one thing I will say is I've always treated this kind of as a real job that I have to consistently show up and put videos. But where in 2023 I was spending maybe 20 plus hours a week with it. Now I'm still doing those 50 to 75 videos a month, but I'm doing it in two or three hours a week. So I've really reduced my time and creating videos because I've gotten better at it, but also just because I'm not doing quite the volume I was doing before.
- [13:59]
Nick Loper
More with Tyler in just a moment, including his take on production, quality video thumbnails, getting paid by brands to do sponsored videos, monetizing on YouTube, and lots.
- [14:08]
Tyler Christensen
More right after this.
- [14:10]
Nick Loper
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- [16:30]
Tyler Christensen
Have you seen a step up in the necessary production value? Or it was still kind of like really rudimentary shot with your phone, a quick voiceover type of stuff.
- [16:40]
Because of the saturation of the market, what we're finding is in certain segments, for certain kinds of products, the quality does matter. So if you're doing mostly technology products, you're competing against people who are professional reviewers, you know, tech reviewers.
- [16:54]
Yeah.
- [16:55]
And so you do need to up the quality for that. If you're reviewing a granola bar, you need to just eat the granola bar and talk about it. You really, there's no need to, to scale up those videos. However, that being said, I, I do feel like if you want to protect yourself as a product reviewer, where it is getting harder and harder to make money on site with Amazon, YouTube does value higher quality videos. And so if you're only going to film it once and edit it once, I am starting to put more time and energy into certain kinds of videos, hoping that they'll do well on YouTube and drive traffic to Amazon. And those same videos seem to be doing a little bit better on Amazon. It's not a huge difference, but it does make a little difference.
- [17:40]
Okay, so cross posting the same content on both channels. Right. Film at once, improve the production quality a little bit, targeting that YouTube traffic, that off site commissions with the understanding that hey, it's a higher quality video. So maybe Amazon's going to prioritize it on the on site side as well.
- [17:59]
To go along with that. One of the things that's really changed the game a little bit in the last year is the popularity of the TikTok shop, which are vertical videos. And Amazon has wanted to compete with that as YouTube Shorts has wanted to with vertical videos. However, what we found in on Amazon is while those get a lot more clicks, they don't get more sales. The vertical videos don't do really well. However, a lot of people who do product reviews are finding that they're doing really well on TikTok shop. So. And I'm included in that, that I've recorded more vertical videos that are punchy, that are quick edits. They're shorter videos, but they take a lot longer to make just because of the editing process. And they'll do well on TikTok shop. They don't do great on Amazon, but they get a lot of clicks, so it messes up all your.
- [18:46]
Is that also through the Amazon Influencer program or. This would be separate through a TikTok shop product.
- [18:54]
Separate on TikTok shop. You have to have. I think right now they've changed it over the last year. It used to be no followers, then it was 10,000 followers. Now it's like 1,000 followers. So you have to meet this minimum threshold of followers to get accepted into the TikTok shop. And so their requirements are different from Amazon, but it doesn't take a ton of time to build up a following on TikTok shop. So a lot of product reviewers are doing that just to supplement their income. And some are doing really well. I know someone that made close to a million dollars last year with just TikTok shop.
- [19:28]
Wow.
- [19:28]
Because he found the right products, understood how to make the right kinds of videos, and so you can make a lot of money there as well. But I know more people on TikTok shop that are making no dollars because it's. It seems to be harder to do, harder to learn than Amazon.
- [19:42]
Yeah, it's trying to hit that, you know, hit something viral at the right price point. And is it, you know, the right place, right time and. Yeah, you make a little commission on something that hits.
- [19:52]
Nick Loper
Dang.
- [19:52]
Tyler Christensen
Yeah.
- [19:53]
That's kind of crazy. Okay, well, maybe. Maybe send. Send me an intro and we could do a video about that. That's something I never even really heard of. But in the TikTok shop case, these are mostly products that you already own. This is stuff that brands are sending to you. Give me a sense of what you're reviewing.
- [20:09]
I think it is mostly stuff that brands send to you. TikTok shop is very different from Amazon and that Amazon has all kinds of products. Anything that you would buy, you can pretty much find on Amazon. TikTok really focuses on viral trending products. They're usually really cheap products, things that you can just, you know, spend 10 or $20 on. And so the people who are having success are riding the trends. They're figuring out what's going to be popular or what's currently popular. And rather than like on Amazon, you might make one or two videos for a particular product. On TikTok Shop, if you find something that's trending and your video's doing well, then you make 50 videos on that same product. You just make a new video every week and kind of build on that momentum. So it's a very different strategy, different filming techniques. It's, it's a little work and I haven't gone full in on that just because it is hard.
- [21:01]
Well, one type of strategy going back to the Amazon side of things was trying to create, instead of just like XYZ product review, it's kind of like this product versus this product. Like kind of a comparison, like trying to help people make the decision for which one is right for them. Have you experimented with anything like that?
- [21:18]
Yes, absolutely. And comparison videos do seem to do really well. And again, talking about crossover here, those kinds of videos do really well on YouTube and drive traffic to Amazon. So if you have like seven of the same kind of product and you can do a big comparison on YouTube, that's going to bring traffic to Amazon. On Amazon, just having a two products having, having a single comparison this or that. Amazon has ran some incentives because they want more videos like that.
- [21:46]
Okay.
- [21:47]
And so maybe they're even promoting those kind of videos a little more. But I found with the videos I wasn't part of that incentive program, but I made those kind of videos anyways and they've done quite well. So if you have. My problem is I don't like to stockhold products. Right. So if I have a lot of the same things, I get rid of them. But like I, I did a bunch of space heaters last year and if I had all of them, I'd make a bunch more comparison. I just don't have those. And so just changes your strategy.
- [22:14]
Yeah. Are you still like giving away stuff to your students?
- [22:17]
Yeah, yeah. That's most of what I review for Amazon. Because if you're doing 800 products in a year, I probably only have and have kept maybe 100 of those things. The rest I get rid of and a lot of them I get for free. Last year I did 400 sponsored videos, products that companies sent to me and I got paid to make those videos. I get paid on the back end, but I don't necessarily need the product so I just give them away.
- [22:42]
Yeah. And the comparison videos are a little more challenging because it's like, well, I just bought the one thing and I don't have the other. I Don't have the tier 2 thing or the alternative, because that's not what I decided to buy. But if you end up getting both, or if you can have better yet, have the brands send them to you. And even better yet, have the brands pay you to do the review. Is that a factor of you building up this volume of work, this body of work on the plan? And then they start to, hey, this guy's reviewing a lot of stuff. We want to make sure that we get our thing in his hands.
- [23:14]
Yeah, it works a couple of different ways. When you create an Amazon influencer account, you'll have a storefront, and on your storefront you can link to your social media accounts. You can't link directly to an email account. So if people want to find you, they have to leave Amazon and go to your YouTube channel or your TikTok or your Instagram. But if you have your contact information there, then they'll find you. And what I'm finding is because I'm putting all my videos on multiple platforms, I'm having just as many people find me on YouTube as are finding me on Amazon through my storefront. And so I'll get inquiries from companies, I get about five a day that say, hey, I've. They always say the same thing. They're, they're mostly foreign sellers and they always say, I've been following for you a long time, I've been following you. I'm your biggest fan. I love your work. When you know, they, they saw one video and it's similar to the product that they're selling, but they always come with that, that pitch that I love all your stuff, can we send you a product and you'll review it? And usually the expectation or the hope there for the, the amaz, you know, this foreign seller that's kind of working as a broker is that we'll send you a product, you'll review it, you'll put it on Amazon, maybe you'll also put it on YouTube and that's a win, win. However, if as a influencer, I decide to return their inquiry and say, I'd love to work with you, I love doing product reviews. I charge X amount to do a review and I put it up on YouTube and Amazon, then a small percentage of those initial inquiries will come back and say, well, that doesn't meet our budget, but we can pay you this amount. Or they'll say, yeah, that sounds great. And so I almost only do paid reviews now and all my reviews are kind of in the 30 to $80 range. But I have enough videos up that people find me both through Amazon and through YouTube. If it's through Amazon, they still have to go to YouTube just to find my email address. But that's how they're finding me. And that's an extra thousand dollars a month just having sponsored videos.
- [25:14]
Okay. I'm starting to see how all of these different revenue streams kind of work together and complement each other. We've got these sponsored videos, we've got the on site Amazon commissions, we've got the creator connections where we can increase the commissions by working with certain products and certain brands. We've got the off site commissions driven from TikTok shop, from YouTube and it all kind of feeds together. If you enjoy doing this type of product review content in starting with what you already have, you can go and look at your own Amazon order history. You can. We've had friends, you know, I've asked, well, what happens when you run out of stuff in your house? Like, well, then I go to my friend's house, then I go to my neighbor's, you know, it just kind of snowballed from there. And as you start to build it up now, the brands start reaching out to you, hey, can we send you this thing? And I don't know, it's a really interesting model.
- [26:01]
The one income source that we haven't talked about yet is also from YouTube. Once you get enough videos there, you can monetize your YouTube channel. So you also make money through AdSense cents. So for me that's a small amount. It's about $500 a month. But again, all those things add up and it's a sizable income at that point.
- [26:18]
Yeah. And 500 bucks a month, not anything to sneeze at when it's work you were going to do anyways.
- [26:23]
Well, especially for a school teacher, $500 a month is life changing for most of us. So yeah, it is a good amount of income. Yeah.
- [26:30]
And one thing that I've noticed as an Amazon shopper, and it was actually a former guest on the show who was like for a toilet or something, we were doing bathroom remodel. I was like, hey, I know those guys. But they had a kind, nice looking, kind of YouTube style thumbnail. I don't know if they were syndicating the same review over to YouTube. It'd be kind of a random thing to have on their YouTube channel, but who knows? Have you seen like the importance of thumbnails type of shift as you're uploading to the influencer side?
- [26:59]
Yeah. So for the Longest time when I first started I would do a thumbnail for Amazon and for YouTube that would highlight the product, maybe outline it, have an arrow, a little bit of text. And I found that I was spending so much time doing thumbnail that I was doing less videos. And so I abandoned that strategy, started just taking screenshots of the product and simply use that. And I've kind of stayed with that over the last couple years. However, again, I'm starting to see the value of off site commissions and so I am spending more time with both thumbnails and with titles. Instead of just a review for this bar of soap, I'm saying this is the bar of soap that I've used for seven years. I won't try any other soap. You know, having more, not necessarily, necessarily clickbait but more enticing titles. And same with the thumbnails. And that's not because it changes a lot on Amazon. I've tested it. And as far as click through and getting people to buy your products, I don't feel like thumbnails are a huge part of the equation right now, but they are a much bigger part of the equation for offsite with YouTube and other platforms.
- [28:07]
Yeah, it's one of these things where if you can build a system and do it relatively quickly, it's probably not going to hurt your click through rate. But maybe don't overthink it. I don't know. I've been trying to pay a little bit more attention because the default is just like, it takes a random screen grab from your video and you're like, well that isn't the best illustration of what we're talking about. So I don't know if this will have any impact on the views that my stuff gets. But like trying to add easy to install or worth it kind of like question mark type of stuff on the thumbnails. We'll see what happens.
- [28:39]
Right, right. And for me the part of the workflow is that I, I grab my product and be as I'm filming the video for the first five seconds I just like point to it and make a funny face or whatever. And that's kind of my style for thumbnails. But then I can just take a screen grab from that on off of the video, save it as a separate file. So it, it really only takes me an additional five seconds. But then I can really feature the product how I want to. I can have it closer to the camera and things like that. And so that has made a bit of a difference for me, I think just because it's very clear what the product is.
- [29:12]
All right. Anything else that you know, newcomers or people who, you know, maybe are going to revisit the Amazon Influencer program should know about this year. That's changed over that time. Obviously we got to look up this creator connections type of thing to see if we can increase the commissions from what we're already doing, but just kind of going through and getting re inspired to create some new video content.
- [29:36]
I think most of what makes you successful as a product reviewer has remained constant. You have to, it's work, you have to put in the time, you have to be fairly consistent. There were a lot of people who started around the same time I did, who worked really hard for six months, made 500 videos, made 20,000, $30,000 off that, but then just burnt out. And so I think the best advice I can give anyone now is set manageable goals. You know, do five videos a week, but do that consistently over a period of several months and then it starts to compound. And if you're only making pennies in the beginning, just know it's a numbers game and you know, it might not be my, my best product review. I did a review in my first year. I was about six months in and, and I was starting to figure out what things sold better and what was trending and I found something that popped off and it made me 17,000 dol. And I have not had that kind of success since then. However, that product still makes me a few hundred dollars every single month. And if I had only done my first 400 videos, I never would have had that product. And so it's just being consistent, looking for different things and improving over time. As far as your product selection and as well as the style of the videos, things like that, you just get better at it.
- [30:54]
That's what's kind of cool here is the videos can have a really long shelf life where like I said, only uploaded eight last year. None of them were necessarily great sellers, but you know, the stuff from the previous year was still making sales. And so if you get something that, that sticks and hopefully doesn't get flooded with a lot of other videos or for whatever reason, yours is the one that gets shown. Like you said, it can drive this passive income really for, for months or years.
- [31:21]
Yeah, and that's the amazing thing. If, if I stopped making videos today, I'd probably still make at least 25,000 do this year just because I have that catalog. And that's really cool to think, you know, maybe I do need to take some time off maybe I've never taken more than two weeks off, but if I took a whole month off, it probably wouldn't matter at all. I'd still be making about the same amount of money. So I love that about the program.
- [31:45]
I mean that's, that's my philosophy on a lot of stuff. Like I want to create these evergreen digital assets like plant these little money seeds. Whether it's, you know, a piece of long form content, podcast episode, YouTube video, blog post where it can hopefully help people and attract traffic and views and revenue for years. Right? It's still going to be relevant. And I think there's an element in the influencer program that speaks to me because it's similar and I kind of like that versus trying to be the next viral hit. And it's like, I don't know, haven't cracked that code yet. I would rapidly take it if it came, but. Well, this is very good. The Amazon Influencer program. We will link up up all of our resources, all the notes. I think we'll just update our previous page for that with Tyler's tips for 2025. Here we're going to move on to round two, which is donate a Business Idea right after this.
- [32:40]
Nick Loper
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- [34:44]
Tyler Christensen
All right, we're back with Tyler from creator side Income for round two, which.
- [34:49]
Nick Loper
Is donate a business idea.
- [34:50]
Tyler Christensen
This is something that you might start if you had more time. This is an opportunity that you see that side Hustlers can run with. What do you got for us?
- [34:58]
Yeah, so I've been thinking about this, because when we talked about the Amazon Influencer program, you probably noticed I referenced YouTube over and over and over, that things are moving. That's a huge platform, and they're growing and they're adding different monetization streams. And So I love YouTube. Well, with my students, I've been talking to them lately. So I teach future teachers. I'm at the university. I teach people who are preparing to become elementary school teachers, and I teach a curriculum class. And my students are always asking, how can I practice creating curriculum? How can I do this in a more authentic way? And my answer to them has been, start a YouTube channel. And it doesn't matter what you talk about. Consistently create videos about any topic, and you'll become more expert on that topic. You'll have to do research, you'll gain expertise. But then the cool thing, and this, this is why it's a business idea, is as you gain expertise, as you gain credibility as an expert, then just like the Amazon Influencer program, where people are reaching out to you to review products, people will reach out to you for your knowledge and ask you for questions. Maybe you'll be on a podcast. Maybe you'll speak at a conference. Maybe it's just something fun. I just created a YouTube channel about collecting things from the 80s and it's just a blast for me. But the cool thing about all of that is as you start building out your catalog of videos now you have something that people are coming to so you can monetize your YouTube channel and make money. That way you can become an affiliate and start sending people to Amazon and making money as an affiliate for products that you talk about on your channel. But then there's other doors that open up where you might have opportunities to speak, to attend an event or a conference, and the list goes on and on. So my business idea is create a YouTube channel about anything and make a bunch of videos.
- [36:53]
Now outside of this 80s collectibles, talk to me about that channel or maybe a different channel that you might say, let's talk about the collectibles.
- [37:03]
Yeah, so I'm having a lot of fun right now. So my channel's called Chasing Junk. And during my childhood that's referred to as the junk wax era for baseball cards, where they way overproduced all the baseball cards. They're not worth anything yet. People my age, us middle age, 40 year old guys, we, we go back and we find our old childhood collections and we're like, I wonder if this is worth anything and it's not.
- [37:27]
Yeah, I got a shoebox, right, right in that closet back there, right?
- [37:31]
So it's really fun. But what I found is I started going back and I bought old packs of baseball cards to open with my kids. And it was super, super fun just to go through that experience, relive my childhood. It was very nostalgic. And then I started thinking, well, now I want to complete that set that I started when I was nine. And so I've started chasing this baseball set and I've done that with, you might see in my background I have some Thundercats, action figures and other things from the 80s. Music I like still collect CDs and vinyl and it's just been fun for me as a collector.
- [38:05]
We got your Atari T shirt, right?
- [38:08]
So I collect stuff and I'm documenting my journey. I don't have a lot of videos up yet, but I'm starting to just unbox packs of cards. I've actually filmed like 200 videos. I just need to upload them. But I'm just having so much fun reliving my childhood, involving my children in the process and then talking about, you know, what it means to me to be a collector, but also to collect something that's worthless to everyone else but has some sentimental value to me. And I have Already had some people reach out with, here's a way to display your cards. We'll send it to you. Just put it on your channel. And so it's already opened some doors. Even though I think I have like one long form video and five shorts or something like that. So it's really in its infancy.
- [38:50]
Okay. Yeah, well, there's certainly precedents for that. I mean, look at what Pat Flynn has done with the, with the Pokemon channel. It's like absolutely blown up. So something in that collectible space. Certainly an interesting one. I like the idea of getting the kids involved because they watch a lot of YouTube and then trying to edit their first video. There's a newfound appreciation for like, what it really means to be a content creator. And it's kind of funny. We get their, like elementary school yearbooks and they ask the fifth graders, you know, what do you want to be when you grow up? They're like, I want to be a Doctor and a YouTuber and I want to be a veterinarian and a part time YouTuber. It's like really, really common to see that. That's like, well, how many videos have you made? Right? Like, start doing the work now. You realize you build up that, you know, first of all, that creative habit of coming up with something consistently, but also like the skills and appreciation for like, what it takes to, to make the stuff happen, make it look good.
- [39:45]
The other thing that I love about that is I've done just like you. I have a bunch of different side hustles. Some of them make money, a lot of them don't. But the more that you look at developing a skill like a video editor or storytelling or creating thumbnails, those all compound. And when you start another side hustle, it's easier and you, you're more likely to have success. And certainly for me, I, I have a vested interest because the better I get at video for any platform, the more effective I am in teaching my online students through video. And so I, I've learned a lot just through researching YouTube. That has made a big difference for me as a school teacher. So I love that those things can all work together.
- [40:24]
Yeah, you can't take too much YouTube advice for me because you look at my channel and it's not, you know, growing particularly fast, but it is this, planting these evergreen digital assets type of content. One thing that we've seen work well on that channel and work well for certain guests is focusing on Q and A content rather than trying to, you know, play in the entertainment space of the Mr. Beasts and the dude perfects of the world is, you know, trying to solve specific problems and you know, answer people's questions and target that, that, you know, search intent where. And we've, I've had videos where it's like answering a very specific search query. It might be 8, 10 years old at this point, like still getting views and so that's something. Or if you can build, build a body of work around that in your niche. Absolutely. You'll start to get opportunities, companies reaching out, people asking for help. We've done entire episodes around, you know, Q and A content, around a specific software tool and feel like, hey, you know, you showed me how to do, do it myself but like I just can't be bothered. Can I hire you? Can you be my consultant on this and just do it for me? You get people to reach out for services based on that.
- [41:31]
Absolutely.
- [41:31]
All right, that's round two. Donate a business idea, start a YouTube channel, become a content creator rather than just a consumer. Round three is the triple threat. And we're going to start off with a marketing tactic that's working right now. It could be influencer related or something else.
- [41:46]
Yeah, so we talked about this earlier, talking about the influencer program, but one thing that I just started a month ago is when I'm creating videos, instead of saying review of product, I'm trying to create intrigue in the title. And the interesting thing has been it works like I really was skeptical that it would make any difference, but my videos on YouTube for just normal product reviews, YouTube is starting to promote those. And I'm seeing that instead of, you know, in the first 30 days that it's getting six views, that over 50% of my newer videos are getting 50 to 300 views for those same kinds of products, the same quality of videos, simply just changing the title a little bit to add a little bit of intrigue. I'm sure that helps with the click through and stuff like that. So my marketing tactic is simply put a little bit more thought into how you label things and how you title things.
- [42:45]
Do you have an example? This is great.
- [42:47]
Well, let's see. I just uploaded 12 videos today. One of them was for a necklace. We were comparing two necklaces. So we had, they were just gold chains. And rather than say comparison of this necklace and this necklace, say, I think I said something like, this is why we decided this necklace is the best. So not a huge change, but just changing the language a little bit.
- [43:11]
Okay. I'm leaving some element of curiosity. Well, I want to figure out why they said that, that we've seen similar. Like the ads I used to run for my shoe business were like, don't buy this shoe until you see, you know, our insider price. Or, you know, watch this first, you know, before you buy, you know, kind of we see that type of video title or hook, I guess an element of intrigue. You probably asked ChatGPT for some intrigue, generating ideas for whatever product it is.
- [43:40]
Yep.
- [43:41]
Yeah. This is the next one. This is a favorite new or new to you tool that you're loving.
- [43:46]
Yeah. So one of the things that I've always done as I generate ideas for different side hustles is I've used my just audio recorder on my phone to record notes. So I'll get done with a walk or a run and I'll just transcribe notes into my phone. I didn't realize that there was so much AI out there that could transcribe those for me that were free. And the one that I've started using a lot lately is the aistudio.google.com so Google has a free AI thing just like Chat GPT, but it's called AI Studio. And it's awesome because you can upload a video, you can upload an audio file, and they will summarize it for you, they will transcribe it for you, they will give you other things that are similar to it. It's a really powerful tool. And I'm just scratching the surface right now, but I love it because I can just transcribe all my notes and now I have text files to go along with the audio files. But then I also use the that to summarize, to create descriptions for product reviews and do other things. So it's been a really powerful tool for me.
- [44:48]
Got it. Okay. So you can plug Those into the YouTube description versus trying to remember what you said or write something from scratch.
- [44:54]
Yeah, it's been awesome. But I use that for a lot of my other kinds of videos where I'm doing a whole episode like this show, where we could put the whole video for this show in and then it will summarize it. It'll be like, in this episode, we covered this, this, this, and this. And it does a really good job with stuff like that.
- [45:11]
All right, aistudio, that's a new one for me. And we're going to wrap this thing up. The final part of the Triple Threat is your favorite book from the last 12 months.
- [45:20]
Yeah, I don't read as much as I used to in. In 2020. I read 200 books because we were stuck at home and, and I love to read, but then I think I burnt myself out. And so I've been very strategic in the last few years. And the one that I, I found about a year ago was a book that was written in 2017 called the Power of Moments by Chip and Dan Heath. And I love this because for my own research for things like Chasing Junk, I'm really interested in nostalgia and how to create moments. But as a parent, I'm especially interested in how to make the most of my time with my children. And our oldest just left home and so we're kind of still in mourning with that. But we have four kids and we want to maximize our time with our children. And so this book is great because it talks about how we can elevate different things, how we can create moments out of fear or maybe out of creating connection. And it gives you a lot of good just suggestions for how to maximize the time that you already have. I've certainly used this as a classroom teacher thinking about how do I improve the hook of my classroom so people are engaged right at the beginning of class that we have another moment somewhere during the lecture and that it always ends in a strong point. So what the book does is it brings in all the science behind how to create meaningful moments and then uses a lot of different stories to illustrate. And that's been super helpful for me as a parent, as a teacher, and it's even improved my YouTube videos and my product reviews.
- [46:55]
Okay, the Power of Moments, that's a new recommendation on the show. Thanks for sharing that. I remember reading Made to Stick maybe was the Heath brothers earlier book a long time ago by. But the Power of Moments, we'll have to check that one out. We'll link that up in the show notes for sure. Now you mentioned, oh, I read 200 books. Is there a place in the influencer program for reviewing those books? Like, hey, this is such a, you know, I read, you know, Malcolm Gladwell. I read this latest title and here's what I thought.
- [47:25]
What we have found is book reviews. There is a place for that. You can review just like any other product and you put it. The book listings are slightly different from other product listings on Amazon, but they still have a space for videos and you can still make money. But if it's an old book that you love, you're not going to make much. It has to be a popular book right now. So if you did like Atomic Habits, you know, I reviewed that a year or two ago and it got enough sales that it paid for the book, but it didn't make me rich. And, and so I wouldn't. If you're going to hone in on one niche with product reviews, Amazon and books aren't the best combination. But you can still make a little bit of money here and there. I've probably done, done like 30 book reviews and I've maybe made a few hundred dollars. Not, not a lot.
- [48:10]
Okay, good to know. You know, there's like anything else, you know, it's a low lower ticket type of thing and the bestsellers probably already have lots of reviews on there.
- [48:18]
The one fun thing about that is like if I review buy buttons, it's just cool to review your friends books, right. And, and so I, I like to do that anyways when I get a new book that I know the author, I throw it up anyways just because then it helps sell the book. So there, there are opportunities for that and I love that we can viewers.
- [48:37]
That is kind of cool and I guess that's probably a good point. I should probably at least make videos for my own books. Be like, hey, I'm Nick, I'm the author. You know, if you have any questions, reach out or you know, as a.
- [48:47]
Another little touch point, however that might not work. I've reviewed a couple of my books and I think they weren't approved just because it was under the same Amazon name or something. And so, so you might not be able to do that.
- [48:59]
All right. You know, a little too close to home sometimes. You know, that algorithm may bite you. No, no, no, no. We're not going to allow this. Well, very good creator side income. You can find Tyler over there on YouTube creatorsideincome.com check him out over there. Really appreciate you stopping by and schooling us on all of the things that are new, all of the world of opportunity in creating little product reviews as a side hustle doing earning great income on the side and kind of re inspired me to go and try and make some more videos here. See if I can do more than eight this year and improve my passive income from the influencer program program again. Creatorsideincome.com, big thanks to Tyler for sharing his insight. Big thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone. You can hit up Sidehustlenation.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 spread the word to share with a friend. So fire off that text message to that friend of yours who buys a lot of stuff on Amazon. I don't know, maybe they need to hear this. 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.