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- [00:01]
Nick Loper
Here are 10 side hustle trends for 2025. What's up? What's up? Nick Loper here. Welcome to the Side Hustle show. Because you're 9 to 5 may make you a living, but your 5 to 9 makes you alive. Today we're tackling some side Hustle trends that you should be aware of because they might impact what business you start and how you think about scaling it. And to help me out with these is a longtime friend and friend of the show. He's been covering online side hustles even longer than I have. From nichepursuits.com Spencer Hans welcome back to the side Hustle Show, Nick.
- [00:32]
Spencer Haws
It's, it's great to be here. Longtime listener, follower of the show and of course we've connected a couple of times in person. It's always fun to talk about side hustles, niche projects if you will. So yeah, really excited to jump in.
- [00:45]
Nick Loper
Yes, a couple old timers here. We'll go for it. So almost all of our content starts from the question how do I make extra money? And to answer that, I think it's important to know where the market's been, where it is today, and maybe where you see it potentially going. So that's our goal for today. 10 or maybe more. We'll see what happens as we get going. 10 observations from a couple, like we said, a couple old guys that you can use hopefully to make some more money this year. And trend number one that I want to bring up is for the last year and a half or so, ever since this helpful content update is what I'm going to call the shrinking SEO landscape. Rand Fishkin has called it zero click publishing. But just in the search results, you see more AI answers, AI snippets, you see more Reddit, you see more user generated content. You see these like huge like image card blocks. Like side Hustle Nation used to rank for a lot of like listicle type of content. But now like this huge chunk of the page is getting like, well, we'll just parse out all the items on your list and put a little image by it. You're like, well, pushes everything else lower, lower down on the page. You know, what are you seeing with niche pursuits? What are you seeing with publishers trying to combat this shrinking piece of the pie? Plus user behavior changing. Like I know from my own personal experience, like I find myself using ChatGPT as a search engine or as an answer engine rather more often than Google these days.
- [02:09]
Spencer Haws
Yeah, quickly changing landscape. A lot is going on in the SEO world I think you hit on that sort of the zero click landscape that we're entering in. I've seen a lot of publishers that, yeah, their ANSW are being taken by those AI overviews that Google is putting out. Not only has there been a lot of updates, Right. You mentioned the helpful content update, but a lot of Google core updates that feel like a lot of small publishers have been impacted heavily with. Right. But even some large publishers I've, I've talked with privately with that their rankings in Google haven't changed. Like they still rank number one for the term or number two for the term. Right. That they originally ranked for. But because there's now this AI overview, they don't get as many clicks.
- [02:55]
Nick Loper
Right.
- [02:55]
Spencer Haws
So the rankings technically haven't changed. They still are the number one organic result for whatever, but they're getting less clicks because people now just read that AI overview, right?
- [03:07]
Nick Loper
Yeah.
- [03:07]
Spencer Haws
And so there's that, that, that Google has changed. And then the other thing, I'm in the same boat with you and I think a lot of people are like, I am starting to use Chat GPT a lot more. Right. Because it remembers what I searched previously. Like, I'll say, hey, I'm starting a little side hustle. And then I might ask it a series of questions like what do I need to get started? And then I might ask, you know, later, what products should I buy to help me with that. Right. And it's just like this ongoing thing that you don't really do on Google very well. You'd have to type out like two paragraphs to do it. ChatGPT just remembers your previous searches.
- [03:46]
Nick Loper
Yeah, you can give it, you can provide it a lot more context, a lot more detail. We're like, hey, we're visiting Japan with, with two boys, they're seven and nine, you know, what do you recommend for this two week itinerary? And it spits out this detailed day by day thing where it's like, ah, you know, but it's, it's frustrating from the content creator perspective because somebody had to create that for it to crawl. And it's like, well, where are they if their business model was monetizing with ad revenue or affiliate clicks, like where are they left and what's the incentive to keep creating this content for the AI to chew on? Like where does it, yeah, where does it go? Like for a time. And I'm still a little bit torn. Like there's still gotta be some value in being a primary source, like scooping a story, you know, providing firsthand experience and review content. But if it ends up just getting aggregated and scraped and re summarized, it's like, well, I don't know why, why are we doing this?
- [04:42]
Spencer Haws
It's extremely frustrating. Right. To the content creator. Because you're exactly right. Somebody had to create all those different itineraries to Japan. Right. That ChatGPT had to learn on. Right. So yeah, we as publishers over the last, you know, however long you've been pub publishing, have been creating and researching and a lot of people have been traveling to these locations and taking pictures and you know, travel bloggers in particular have been hit really hard. Food bloggers in particular have been hit really hard. Right. Where AI can now just spit out the recipe for you. That's that sort of thing. And so where does that leave publishers? I don't know the right answer. You know, going forward, other, other than we're in this really big shift, this big transition phase of boy, you either need to provide really unique or like you said, maybe scooping truly groundbreaking stories or your writing is just so fascinating that you can build an audience. You have an email list, people truly following you for your personality or for your writing abilities or for whatever it is that makes you unique. So building an audience is just becoming so important. Right. Because if you're just there for that transactional query and you were making money with ads in the past, that may be not a very strong business going forward.
- [06:03]
Nick Loper
Yeah, it's a challenging and changing landscape. And maybe that brings us to trend number two in light of the SEO challenges or the search traffic challenges. Like I'm still, you know, maybe this is old school, but like I still think you ought to have a website as your home base, something you truly do own and control. But, but we've seen the shift towards what we might call social first audience building or social first publishing, where I'm going to go out into Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter and like try and bring people back into my world or try and go where, you know, go where my audience already is and try and create content, build up reputation authority on whatever topic it is on these other platforms and then, you know, question mark, question mark, question mark. Step three, monetize a profit.
- [06:52]
Spencer Haws
Right?
- [06:52]
Nick Loper
It's like it's not, it's not as simple as it was. You know, just pasting in an AdSense or a Mediavine script and saying, well, now I get paid views. So I got, I got revenue.
- [07:01]
Spencer Haws
Right. Yeah, exactly. Right. For, for a long time in particular, as you know, we talk about bloggers and Blogging a lot. Right. The model was like, okay, get this organic traffic from Google. And now that pie is shrinking. I think a lot of content creators are trying to get that organic traffic right to avoid having to do paid media. But they're doing it like you said, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, LinkedIn. Pick your platform. YouTube.
- [07:28]
Nick Loper
Yeah, right.
- [07:28]
Spencer Haws
Is a big one. And then what are they doing with that audience? It all just depends. But I agree that hey, that should be maybe one arrow in your quiver of like, okay, what's the organic reach that I can get? Where am I publishing my content? Pick a platform, whatever it is. Instagram, YouTube.
- [07:47]
Nick Loper
Yeah. And I would probably say pick, pick one to start with and like study it, learn it, own it, and, and go deep, you know, simplify first, diversify second.
- [07:55]
Spencer Haws
But then do lead them to a website or to an email list or some central hub where hey, you interact with your audience on a more intimate level. A lot of businesses do that well and it's just I used to say, hey, go, go to Google and get that organic reach. But maybe, yeah, it is more a social approach. I think that's, I'm seeing that a lot.
- [08:18]
Nick Loper
Yeah. I think it's going to lead to maybe more thoughtful or more creative monetization strategies where it's like if the, if the game plan was to just, you know, blanket the web, like trying to target, you know, long tail search queries, you're going to have to have a more in depth knowledge base around that topic to be able to monetize with a, you know, coaching or consulting program like solve somebody's specific problem. You're going to have to go up market in a way if the bottom end of that information based search traffic is just going to get eaten by AI.
- [08:49]
Spencer Haws
Yeah. And you know, one other thing for people to consider that I'm seeing is video first content is a bigger moat. Right. It's gaining in a lot of popularity. The platforms, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube. Right. Are probably, if you're willing and able to get in front of the camera, create great videos, whether it's shorts or long form videos, that is going to have a little bit bigger moat than if you're just to do written content. Because AI can spit out written content all day long, but it hasn't quite gotten to the place where it can replicate you and I quite as well. There's still a moat there. If you can do video first content, I think you can build an audience faster.
- [09:36]
Nick Loper
Okay, that makes sense. You played around with any AI assisted video like Are you doing any. Hey, Jin Spencer. What's like your little avatar talking on the. On the screen?
- [09:44]
Spencer Haws
I haven't gone as far as, you know, my avatar so much. AIB role.
- [09:50]
Nick Loper
Yeah.
- [09:50]
Spencer Haws
You know, elements that I can add to my. My videos. Done. Done some things like that or. Or other sort of silly B roll. I had some B roll on a YouTube video recently where I was talking to an artificial intelligence, you know, person. It was quite obvious that they were not real. It was sort of like an inside B roll joke or whatever. But so played around. But portion of my videos at this point.
- [10:18]
Nick Loper
Yeah, video. Video first social. First create that bigger moat where if you have that firsthand experience, like, and it's you on camera, you're building that relationship and trust. That is a much deeper relationship. And same thing with podcasting. Like, hard to build an audience, but once you have people paying attention, like, really, really valuable audience, especially if they're going to spend 45 minutes a week with you in their earbuds. Right. You build that relationship much more powerfully than somebody, you know, Googling something and, like, skimming a blog post for, you know, 90 seconds and then they're on to the next thing.
- [10:52]
Spencer Haws
Yep, exactly.
- [10:53]
Nick Loper
The next one on my list. It kind of relates to this video first. And maybe we could call it, you know, short form. Video is eating everything. Like the tiktokification of. Of the planet. But the one that comes to mind is the. It's kind of like the. I'll call it like, the fall of the follower and the rise of the algorithm where it no longer, like. I'll give the example of, like, if I log into Facebook or Instagram or any of these platforms, like, half of the stuff in my feed is from accounts that I don't follow, have never followed, have no relationship with. But it's stuff that the algorithm thinks I will like. And it does a pretty good job of that because it's like, it's. For me, it's like a lot of, you know, data visualization and maps or baseball statistics, because it knows I'm going to stop and, like, try and figure this out. Like, what is this thing trying to show me? Or on Instagram, it's like a lot of, like, ski videos. Like, oh, watch this guy go over some crazy jump. Like, you have to watch the landing to see if he makes it.
- [11:51]
Spencer Haws
Yeah.
- [11:51]
Nick Loper
And they know it's going to stop the scroll. Even though I, like, I don't follow any of these accounts. It's like, it's just a weird thing. So the the good news is, if you're a new creator, if you create something that's compelling, you have the chance to punch above your weight class and get seen by, you know, more than your three followers. The drawback is if you have a bit of a following, you still have to play the algorithm's game. And, you know, unless it's really compelling, even the people who do follow you probably not going to see your stuff.
- [12:17]
Spencer Haws
Yeah, exactly. You know, on YouTube, we've always accepted this. When you go to your YouTube homepage, you expect to get recommended videos, right? That most of the videos you're seeing in your recommendations are not channels that you've subscribed to. Right. We've, from day one, we've always just sort of accepted this on YouTube. But you're exactly right. It's creeped into Facebook, Instagram, other platforms where you go through. You're not seeing your friends posts anymore. You're seeing, you know, whatever sort of interest the algorithm has assigned to you. And so, you know, hey, good for their business. I guess. It's maybe increasing engagement. But you're exactly right that I have seen, like, some really small Facebook pages, for example, that they can have something go absolutely viral. They only have 10,000 followers, but one of their posts gets, like 10 million views. Right. Just because for whatever reason, it's triggered this algorithm and it can get in front of a really, really large audience. So there's a lot of opportunity there if you can kind of figure out what types of content work really well and you can kind of game the algorithms a little bit on these platforms. But as a user, we may or may not love this situation. Right. People call it brain rot. We've got a lot of brain rot in our feeds that we got we got to get past. So, you know, it's. Which one one's out there? I don't know.
- [13:37]
Nick Loper
But then it's like, what's the benefit to the creator? Like, okay, I got a lot of views, but is. I mean, is Facebook paying these creators, like, based on the views? Like, you played around with their. What do they call it? Like their partner program or publishing program or something?
- [13:52]
Spencer Haws
Yeah, their performance bonus program is exactly right. And I could talk about this a lot. I don't know if this is like another side hustle, you know, whatever number we're on here.
- [14:00]
Nick Loper
Yeah, go for it.
- [14:02]
Spencer Haws
Facebook performance bonus program is a really interesting program. So think of it. I mean, think of it like the YouTube Partner Program. Right. You know, we all see Mr. Beast videos. He has ads in his videos. The YouTube pays him, you know, AdSense revenue. Ad revenue. That's exactly what Facebook is doing. That if you get accepted to this performance bonus program. And not everyone gets accepted, but I do happen to have a Facebook page that is accepted. So I can talk intelligently about this program that once your accepted, you get paid based on essentially views and interaction of your posts. Right. So if you do have something that goes viral, gets a million views, gets a ton of comments, gets a bunch of, you know, thumbs up or whatever, you will make more money. And so I have a particular page that my best month ever was just over $5,000. And that was about two months ago. Okay, right. On average now it's doing 3,500 to $4,000 a month. And it's just a very obscure, random topic that isn't like, you know, popular. It's not like mainstream news or anything. It's more like nostalgic type stuff. Like, hey, remember the 80s when this happened? That's not really what my page is, but kind of in that vein. Right? Nostalgic stuff.
- [15:16]
Nick Loper
Okay. I get some of that stuff too. Like here's, you know, here was the Billboard, you know, top 12 modern rock chart from 1994. And you're like, I remember those songs exactly.
- [15:27]
Spencer Haws
Stuff kind of like that. Remember this, you know.
- [15:30]
Nick Loper
Okay.
- [15:30]
Spencer Haws
And it might be an image of something that was, you know, from 20 years ago or 30 years ago or whatever.
- [15:35]
Nick Loper
Yeah, I remember like blowing into the Nintendo cartridge or.
- [15:38]
Spencer Haws
Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Good stuff.
- [15:41]
Nick Loper
Is this something you're. Someone on your team is sourcing this type of material, like coming up with this on a consistent basis?
- [15:47]
Spencer Haws
Yes, it is. I've, you know, I managed it from. From the beginning. But like you, I've got a lot of other things going on. So I found somebody that they run it, they manage the entire process. They source the content, you know, write up the descriptions and interact with the Facebook pa. They are essentially doing everything at this point.
- [16:06]
Nick Loper
Okay.
- [16:07]
Spencer Haws
I'm just, you know, kind of managing and making sure everything's working well. So it's hardly any of my own time. So I, you know, pay this particular person, you know, va to. To run it and manage it and I take whatever profits I get.
- [16:19]
Nick Loper
Yeah. Is it mostly image content? Video, like what's working well?
- [16:22]
Spencer Haws
Yeah, it's pretty much image content. Yeah. Where we might ask a question about, you know, do you remember this? Or, you know, did you ever experience this or whatever it is? You know, we'll write something on it. We might put a caption on the Image, you know, but yeah, it's, it's image content. We don't do any video content at this point, so.
- [16:42]
Nick Loper
Okay, that's an interesting one.
- [16:44]
Spencer Haws
Yeah.
- [16:44]
Nick Loper
How many views it took to make that $5,000, plus the ramp up period to get there. And more side Hustle trends with Spencer coming up right after this. Nobody does selling better than our sponsor Shopify. That's why it's the number one checkout on the planet. We do Shopify now. A lot of the third party platforms and stuff just integrate a lot better with Shopify. It has made a huge difference in our ability to be more flexible on our site. That was Randall pulfer from episode 661 and he's just one of many side Hustle show guests who rely on Shopify to power their online sales. One of the things I think is really cool about Shopify is shop pay, which basically streamlines the checkout process. If any of your customers have purchased from the millions of other Shopify stores, that can boost conversions up to 50%, meaning a whole lot less abandoned carts and a whole lot more sales going. It's no secret businesses that sell more sell on Shopify. Upgrade your business today and get the same at checkout used by dozens of successful side Hustle show guests. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.comsidehustle all lowercase go to shopify.comsidehustleen to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.comsidehustle Lots of scrappy side hustlers start their business with just their personal phone number. I've been there. I remember checking customer voicemails between classes in college. But at a certain point, you can't be limited to just your cell phone and notes app to get your work done. With our sponsor, OpenPhone, you can stay connected while powerful AI features help keep your business on track. What's OpenPhone? It's the number one business phone system to help you separate your personal life from your growing business. For the cost of just a few coffees, your team can have a dedicated phone number to manage calls and texts, all from a single platform. Think of it like having a shared inbox for your phone number. You worked hard for those leads. Don't let them slip through the cracks. Join the 50,000 businesses that trust OpenPhone to streamline their customer communications. Right now, OpenPhone is offering Side Hustle show listeners 20% off your first six months when you go to openphone.com Sidehustle that's O P E N P-H-O-N-E.com Sidehustle for 20% off, six months. Openphone.com Sidehustlez and if you have existing numbers with another service, OpenPhone will port them over at no extra charge.
- [19:12]
Spencer Haws
Yeah. So this particular page just got into the bonus program. I want to say July of last year. So that's about nine months, something like that. And I don't remember the first one or two months, but it was under $1,000. But quickly after that, since, you know, late last year, call it October, November.
- [19:32]
Nick Loper
Yeah.
- [19:33]
Spencer Haws
It's been making a couple thousand dollars a month. So only, you know, two or three months of getting accepted. Now, the page was about a year old before that.
- [19:40]
Nick Loper
Okay. Was it one that you started, or did you buy it, like, for the existing base?
- [19:44]
Spencer Haws
I had started. I had started this particular page from scratch.
- [19:48]
Nick Loper
Okay.
- [19:48]
Spencer Haws
And I was trying to send traffic to my website, you know, to, you know, make things go viral, send them to the website, make money from the ads on my website. It was, like, maybe making a couple hundred dollars a month. But once I got accepted, the performance bonus program, I went all in on, I'm just keeping everybody on Facebook. I'm like, hardly send them to my website at all because I'm making a lot more.
- [20:12]
Nick Loper
Yeah.
- [20:12]
Spencer Haws
And so to answer another, I think you asked, like, how many views does it take? So my highest viewed month, where I made about just over $5,000, there was 30 million, like, views or impressions.
- [20:25]
Nick Loper
Okay. Okay. Yeah.
- [20:26]
Spencer Haws
Like, essentially 30 million people scrolled past our content.
- [20:29]
Nick Loper
Wow. Yeah.
- [20:30]
Spencer Haws
You know, at some point. So it's a lot. But on Facebook, it can. I mean, things can absolutely, you know, blow up.
- [20:36]
Nick Loper
It can add up. Okay.
- [20:38]
Spencer Haws
And the page has about 100,000 followers, just so people are aware.
- [20:41]
Nick Loper
Okay. So, yeah, so it's true. All those views have translated into some people clicking and saying, okay, we'll follow you now.
- [20:47]
Spencer Haws
Exactly.
- [20:48]
Nick Loper
Okay. Do you have a sense of how often your VA is posting new stuff?
- [20:51]
Spencer Haws
We post like, 10 to 15 times every day.
- [20:54]
Nick Loper
Okay.
- [20:54]
Spencer Haws
So. So it's a lot. So it's, you know, it's a serious thing. Oh, yeah, yeah. It's two, three hours a day. She's in there, you know, posting images and interacting.
- [21:02]
Nick Loper
All right.
- [21:03]
Spencer Haws
Yeah. It's a legit thing until, you know, Facebook ends their performance bonus program, and it's all crushed. But for now, you know, we're putting a lot of effort into it, and it's working until.
- [21:13]
Nick Loper
Yeah, until the rug gets pulled down. The one that shows up a lot in my fee is Jeff Rowe's. Like, Good financial sense. Like, his stuff shows up a lot.
- [21:21]
Spencer Haws
Oh, yeah.
- [21:21]
Nick Loper
And. And he's like, trying to trigger people politically. A lot of these, like, he just grabs like screenshots of somebody, you know, and he'll play both sides. Like, I get the sense that he's like, completely agnostic. I don't really care. I was like. But like, I want to spark those engagements, spark those reactions and try and get people to. To click on this. I bet. I imagine he's doing pretty well with his bonus program as well.
- [21:43]
Spencer Haws
Yep, yep. No, and that's, that's smart. We do similar things. So going to like your, you know, Nintendo example. Right. We might post an image of like nine games and say, pick your favor if you were stuck inside all day or something. Right. And everybody, oh, Mike Tyson's punch out. You know, that's the one I want to do. Or, you know, it's stuff kind of like that. So it's fun stuff.
- [22:03]
Nick Loper
Yeah, it's like engagement bait in a way.
- [22:05]
Spencer Haws
It's like engagement bait sometimes.
- [22:07]
Nick Loper
Totally. Oh, this is great. Yeah. I get people debating. Oh, for sure.
- [22:10]
Spencer Haws
Yeah.
- [22:11]
Nick Loper
Okay. I haven't applied to do this. You know, maybe need. I need to find a VA like yours to come up with this type of content. Even if it's side hustle related. That could be an interesting way to grow the page and another revenue stream if the, if the page views are going down on the main site.
- [22:25]
Spencer Haws
Yeah, absolutely. There's potential there.
- [22:27]
Nick Loper
All right, what's. What's next on the list for you?
- [22:29]
Spencer Haws
Let's see. We kind of talked about artificial intelligence kind of showing up everywhere, but there's people that are truly starting, like, artificial intelligence businesses. Right. So call it Vibe coding. Right. We now have people using these tools that they're not coders, that they're building software products, they're building apps, they're building little tools that people are paying for or using. Right. And so if you have followed Peter Levels on Twitter, for example, he's built a game using artificial intelligence. It's like an airline simulator. It's a, like a airplane simulator type game that thousands of people can play at the same time. So everybody's like doing flight simulators together. So you got to, I don't know, I haven't played it, but you're dodging other planes and it's just absolutely, you know, blown up. But he built it all with artificial intelligence and he has a large following. So he has been able to, you know, get a lot of users very quickly. Right. That's a big Part of it is having that built in audience. And now he has sponsors in the game that are paying like, hey, we'll sponsor the cloud or we're sponsor the building. Right. And so nice he posts it. But it's, I mean, it's insane numbers. Like it's over $50,000 he's made in this. It's, it's like less than a month old. Right.
- [23:53]
Nick Loper
Wow.
- [23:53]
Spencer Haws
And so, but there's lots of other examples now of people that are building tools and apps and actually selling them or, you know, allowing people to use them all using, you know, cursor AI as a tool. There's lovable AI, there's all these tools you can use where you basically chat, you know, you chat with the AI and it builds the app for you.
- [24:17]
Nick Loper
Yeah. Isn't that nuts? Just like natural language. This is what I want to build.
- [24:20]
Spencer Haws
It's crazy. Yeah.
- [24:21]
Nick Loper
We did a whole episode about this with Pete McPherson from. Do you even blog? He's built out a handful of these different tools. His latest one is like an email list gadget. List gadget I think it's called. But he's got several of these, exited at least one of them. And it was really interesting how he recommended. Okay, I want to start off by asking ChatGPT like, Hey, I want to build this big picture. What do I need? And it'll list out like, here's what you need to do. It's like step two, go to cursor. Natural language. Here's what I want to build. These are the features of functionality that I want to have. This is what I'm thinking. And it's like boom, boom, boom. You know, it's like, and now you have a semi working version and then you ask, you know, you ask it to troubleshoot itself and do the QA testing.
- [25:07]
Spencer Haws
Yeah.
- [25:07]
Nick Loper
And now you got to go figure out. But the marketing and sales piece is always the challenge of that. And his recommendation was to like, you know, start with your own pains and problems, scratch your own itch. And like, we called it kind of unbundling of different tools where I may not need the whole feature set of an Ahrefs, for example. But like, if I could do this one little piece of it, you know, okay, maybe that's something that people would be worth paying nine bucks a month for, 19 bucks a month for.
- [25:34]
Spencer Haws
Yeah, no, it's super fascinating. And I've seen several examples, kind of like you mentioned, of people that are building tools, maybe they're not even selling them, but they're building tools for their own business to just make their life a little bit more efficient, like building their own, essentially, WordPress plugin. Like, I want, you know, something to do this on my website or fix, you know, a thousand images, you know, and I. I don't know how to do that. I'm not a programmer, but I'm smart enough to ask an AI tool how to do that and it spits out code for me. Right. To improve my own business.
- [26:09]
Nick Loper
Yeah. The one that I got all excited about the other night was maybe this could just be like a custom GPT tool. It's like so ever after every episode hit stop recording. My next step is to look at the transcript and kind of mark up for the editor. You know, the questions that didn't really land or where the conversation went off the rails. Right. Just to tighten that up a little bit and provide a better listening experience. My thought is to build that custom GPT, like, feed in a bunch of before and afters. Like, here was the original recording, here's what made the final cut. Learn from this. Maybe upload 10 or 15 of those and then like, here's the next raw transcription. Like, could you provide some suggestions on what to trim from this episode to tighten it up a little bit and just to see what kind of results? Maybe that would speed up my review process a little bit.
- [26:56]
Spencer Haws
Yeah. Now there's like so many applications of different things that you can do across your entire business. It's a, it's an exciting time. Right. But things are changing so fast. But the good news is that such a small percentage of people out there, even though everybody listening may have heard that, hey, I can actually get AI to do some coding for me, Very, very few people actually take that step to actually build something still. So the opportunity is there. You just still need to be willing to jump in, take a risk, build out your idea and do it. So potentially becoming cheaper to build a software business and there's still opportunity there. I do think for the next few years, there's still only going to be a tiny sliver of people that actually take that step and do this.
- [27:46]
Nick Loper
Yeah. This is an interesting one from a software entrepreneur like yourself. Like, oh, if we go back 15 years ago, does Long Tail Pro just take a fraction of the development time and effort and cost to build something today?
- [28:01]
Spencer Haws
Probably so. Yeah, yeah, exactly. If I were to start from scratch, you know, I'd probably still have to work with a developer, but I bet I could get it 50% of the way there. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. It Would definitely be way cheaper to build something.
- [28:17]
Nick Loper
Now, I like this idea of building something for your own use. And then maybe with a few tweaks, it's almost like white labeling to a different audience. Like if somebody else, if another podcaster wanted to utilize the same, you know, editing assistant, you know, maybe they could do that. And then maybe someday Descript wants to buy that from me, and I've got a nice little chunk of change for my exit.
- [28:39]
Spencer Haws
Yeah, exactly. And so here's another side hustle trend that I'm seeing that's very related. Right. So I think we piggyback on this is creating free tools or free websites that perhaps are, you know, generated with AI or not. Right. It. Either way. But I've been covering on my YouTube channel, I cover a lot of free games or free tools, you know, free calculators, a lot of these things. Like, for example, a couple of them are really simple tools, like a YouTube thumbnail downloader. All you do is you pop in the YouTube URL and it pulls the thumbnail for you. Right. Another tool I covered is you upload an image of yourself and AI detects the. The shape of your face. You know, do you have a round face or an oblong face or a. An olive face? Like, I didn't even know this thing existed. Right. But for example, the face shape, it's called. Oh, what's the website anyways? I can't remember the exact website that it's called, but it gets something like, like two and a half million visitors every month.
- [29:50]
Nick Loper
Wow.
- [29:50]
Spencer Haws
That are coming. People just, they want to know the shape of their face.
- [29:53]
Nick Loper
This little like, face, face shape quiz thing.
- [29:56]
Spencer Haws
Yeah, it's like face shape AI. You upload an image of yourself, it says, oh, you've got an oblong face. You know, congrats. They're just monetized with ads. Right. But there's lots of calculators. Like, there's a sleep calculator. A fun one is snow day to calculator.com YouTube. You put in your zip code and it predicts if you're going to have a snow day tomorrow. Like, is, what. What are the odds that school's going to be canceled tomorrow? Right.
- [30:23]
Nick Loper
Okay.
- [30:24]
Spencer Haws
And that gets like 3 million visitors a month during the winter months. Right.
- [30:28]
Nick Loper
Wow.
- [30:28]
Spencer Haws
So there's a lot of these little, either free tools or there's lots of games. There's tons of examples of games out there. Like, you could just think of some, you know, silly word game or shape game or whatever it is. You make it free monetized with ads. The thing can be built with AI or simple coding. Right. So. So a lot of these free websites, free tools, a lot of these things I'm still seeing do, do really, really well.
- [30:54]
Nick Loper
Do you know the secrets behind the, what's driving the traffic for like the face shape predictor or the snow day predictor or anything like that?
- [31:02]
Spencer Haws
Well, the, like the face shape one does really well in Google it. It is getting a lot of organic.
- [31:08]
Nick Loper
Traffic and this is something people are searching for. Yeah.
- [31:11]
Spencer Haws
Like here, if I, if I search, what's the shape of my face? I want to get the. Oh, detect face shape.com is the website.
- [31:20]
Nick Loper
Okay.
- [31:21]
Spencer Haws
Right. Yes. People are searching for this. I was, I was blown away. Like the, the keywords, like it's hundreds of thousands of searches every month for a bunch of these. So. So that is a Google play. The snow day calculator. One gets a lot of repeat visitors. Once people find it, they just know, hey, this is. I don't know why so many people look, but people that want to get out of school, they're yay, 100%.
- [31:44]
Nick Loper
Sounds like something my kids would check every morning.
- [31:46]
Spencer Haws
Exactly. There's clouds today. Maybe I can get out of school tomorrow. Exactly what they're doing.
- [31:51]
Nick Loper
Yeah. And you're like, well it's 54 degrees so don't get your hopes up.
- [31:54]
Spencer Haws
That's right. It's fun stuff.
- [31:55]
Nick Loper
No, this is cool. This has always kind of been on the back burner. You know what is kind of the niche tool or a little calculator. And maybe with the help of AI, maybe it's a little simple game, one that we talked about. After a recent trip, we went to Hawaii with the family and we're snorkeling along and you know, my six year old will tell you the story of like, you know, the giant turtle attack. And it's like, of course the turtle is paying him no mind at all. But like the water was kind of cloudy and it shows up like two feet in front of our face.
- [32:25]
Spencer Haws
Oh yeah, Scary.
- [32:26]
Nick Loper
So he's like freaking out and I'm like, dude, did he see a shark or something? You know, so maybe we could make like a crossy road style game. But it's like turtles and sharks and jellyfish, like something where you have to like go across the ocean this way.
- [32:39]
Spencer Haws
I like it.
- [32:40]
Nick Loper
You know, maybe there's something a little browser based game that you could do based on that and who knows, maybe people find it.
- [32:46]
Spencer Haws
Yeah, absolutely. I honestly think there are thousands of ideas that sometimes the sillier the better. Right. Because they might have chance to go viral. Either create a really great game. Right. Or if it's something silly that's fun.
- [33:01]
Nick Loper
Yeah.
- [33:02]
Spencer Haws
That people might talk about. But you know, it's got the opportunity to be shared a lot and can do well. So lots of opportunity there.
- [33:08]
Nick Loper
Yeah. There was something, I saw a Twitter post about this and I'll see if I can dig it up for the show notes. But it was a bunch of like software or little tool ideas and it was, you know, sometimes it's something simple like how to improve images in Word or like, you know, maybe you can kind of piggyback a question based query with Word, Excel, you know, some software tool and like, maybe there's some like layer on that you could add to that for a workplace. You know, maybe if people are swiping the company credit card, they don't, they think less about it than pulling out their own money. So maybe there's something there.
- [33:44]
Spencer Haws
Yeah. And to piggyback on that a little bit, you know, we talked about, hey, you know, Google is changing organic traffic, is searching for a lot of content creators. The one area that I am seeing organic traffic still do really, really well are these tools, these games. Right. Because when somebody is searching for that particular problem, you know, what is the shape of my face or whatever the query is, you know, they actually do need to go to that tool or that website to get that information. So yeah, yeah, that is the one area that if you want to try and get that organic search, you need to be thinking more about tools, actual products or games, you know, something people can go to and actually use and interact with on your website.
- [34:31]
Nick Loper
Okay, very cool. The next one that I have on my list is what, what I'm calling the death of the online course and the rise of the higher touch, higher engagement offer. And I don't know if this is a factor of AI or a factor of just like online course fatigue where it's like that lower ticket, maybe the 100 to $500 online courses make a really, a really difficult place to play in right now in my opinion. And what we're seeing is a shift towards the, you know, thousand, two thousand, maybe two to ten thousand dollars, as much as $30,000 for like some really high touch. You have a dedicated coach who's going to hold your hand. Maybe there's some on site, local retreats or workshops that are included in this. But it can kind of a transition away from purely on demand pre recorded video based course to a more high engagement Maybe there's a community element to this. Maybe there's live coaching elements. And so if you're thinking about structuring an offer, that's just something to keep in mind for, you know, going forward.
- [35:44]
Spencer Haws
Yeah. And I think part of that is that there's so much information for free on YouTube. YouTube through video content. I think that's part of it. Right. Is that, hey, maybe I used to buy a video course for 200 or $500, but now I, I can get 90% of the way there just with free content on YouTube. So, so people are, if it's just video, maybe, maybe I'm not going to do it. But I do believe that you're exactly right. More and more people are craving in person type meetups or community based, you know, where you can interact either in smaller groups, you know, maybe you have a mastermind that's part of this community that you can meet up with on a regular basis or you get that more high touch. Like you said that that's what I'm seeing. And same with me, you know, I am, I'm part of an online community that I paid for for a few years. But I, I don't pay for the education part of it. It's really just the community part of it that I'm there because I like the people that are in the community. And when I have a problem, I have a group of people I know and I trust. I know they're experienced. I can bring up an issue and I know I'll get an answer.
- [37:02]
Nick Loper
Yeah, this community based, we've seen people shifting from like a on demand evergreen model to more of a cohort based. If you're going to do the course thing, it's like we're all going to go through this together. It has a defined start date and a defined end date and you know everybody. There's no working ahead. Like we're going to do this together like that. Safety in numbers or strength in community I think can work really well and it makes it probably easier to sell than just something. Well, it's always available. You can buy it tomorrow, you can buy it the next week. Doesn't really matter. It's like you got to get in because we're starting on Tuesday.
- [37:34]
Spencer Haws
Yep, exactly right. Yeah. I think those types of models work well. Seems to be the trend. That's what I'm seeing.
- [37:41]
Nick Loper
More side hustle trends with Spencer in just a moment. Including a seldom talked about publishing channel, Spencer's latest side hustle and the businesses that AI isn't touching anytime soon right after this. Do you say data or data? I think I'm a data guy and one thing I love about Mint Mobile is I can get all the data I need for one low monthly price. That's right. Our sponsor, Mint Mobile is here to rescue you from overpriced wireless in their jaw dropping monthly bills and unexpected overages. All Mint Mobile plans come with high speed data or data your choice 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 bring over your existing phone number and all your existing contacts. Join me in ditching overpriced wireless and get three months of premium wireless service for Mint mobile for just $15 a month. No matter how you say it, don't overpay for it. Shop data plans@mintmobile.com Sidehustle that's mintmobile.com Sidehustle upfront payment $45 for 3 month 5 gigabyte plan required equivalent to $15 per month new customer offer for first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. Free audio post production by alphonic.com when you're growing your business in your team, you need a hiring partner that can help you rise to the challenge you need Indeed our sponsor. Indeed is the hiring platform where you can attract, interview and hire all in one place. Here's our recent guest skyler from episode 645 what's your recruiting look like? I would use Indeed.
- [39:20]
Spencer Haws
Indeed was really really helpful at first.
- [39:22]
Nick Loper
Plus with Indeed sponsored jobs, there's no monthly subscriptions, no long term contracts, and you only pay for results. How fast is Indeed in this 60 second commercial, 23 businesses just hired their next team member. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right with Indeed side Hustle show listeners get a $75 sponsored job credit. To get your jobs more visibility@inn Indeed.com Sidehustleshow just go to indeed.com Sidehustleshow right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com Sidehustleshow terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. One other trend that I found interesting or maybe, maybe it's been going on forever and I was just like playing in the organic sandbox too much. But like, you know, more and more entrepreneurs incorporating paid media, paid traffic, paid acquisition strategies and really trying to break down their value chain of well, what is a customer ultimately worth? At the end of the funnel or, you know, what is a visitor really worth to me? What's an email subscriber worth to me? How can I go out and profitably buy those customers? Like, it was insane, the amount of money flowing through Meta from one mastermind group or coaching group I was a part of last year. It's like everybody in the room was spending thousands, tens of thousands of dollars a month with Mr. Zuckerberg. And I was like, dude, what an amazing business that they built.
- [40:49]
Spencer Haws
Yeah, yep, exactly. Right. But I mean, that's the, that's sort of the golden opportunity that's always been there, is that if you, you know that it costs you a dollar to acquire a customer and you can make $2 for every customer that you get in the door, you're going to just spend as much money as you possibly can. Right. And I've personally never landed on that perfect business where I can just spend tens of thousands of dollars every month. And I know I'm going to make tens of thousands of dollars in profit because I'm buying that traffic. But some people have, some people have. You know, one of those examples that has been very public about it is Matt Paulson. He owns MarketBeat.com where it's a financial newsletter business where he spends essentially as much money as he possibly can to get people on his email list. And he now has, I think it's. It was either 5 or 6 million subscribers that he just passed.
- [41:44]
Nick Loper
Wow.
- [41:45]
Spencer Haws
On his email list. So it's a huge business at this point. And he's calculated out, okay, I know I'm gonna make this much in the first week. You know, because we send this many emails and this many convert, we know we're gonna make this much after the first month or lifetime value of the customer. And so he just keeps pouring gas on the fire there.
- [42:05]
Nick Loper
Well, yeah, so you can get that flywheel spin and. Yeah, spend as much as you can.
- [42:09]
Spencer Haws
Yep, exactly. Right. And so this might be part B of this side hustle trend. The trend that maybe has been around for a little while is newsletters. Newsletters as a business. Right. I, I think is what I'll put that category in is a lot of people are sort of foregoing the traditional website and they're truly just focusing on. We just get people on the email list and then we have sponsors that pay to be listed in our email newsletter. Right. A little ad spot. And so you get fifty thousand or a hundred thousand people on your email list and you know you're going to make a thousand dollars every time you send an email newsletter out to your list, you do that two times a week. Right. All of a sudden you're making eight, $10,000 a month. And so this has been a trend. Definitely a side hustle trend that I've seen is monetized email newsletters. And that is the platform. Like that's it.
- [43:01]
Nick Loper
Yeah, it's interesting. Well, we create all this content with the goal of getting people on my newsletter. What if the newsletter is the content and it's working really well for some people and maybe an even clearer path towards that, that lifetime value of a subscriber metric that you're trying to figure out and like, okay, now I can go out and buy subscribers, essentially. We talked with Ryan Sneddon on the Naptown Scoop local newsletter for Annapolis. It's like, well, based on this ad load and this frequency, it's exactly what you described. Oh yeah, I can totally go out and buy subscribers. But for a local newsletter it's like, well, the population's 80,000. I'm going to cap out at some point where it's like the market share is only so big. Big. But for something that is a little bit broader, then you really can't go huge with it.
- [43:47]
Spencer Haws
Yep. Or you go to more locations. Right.
- [43:50]
Nick Loper
It's true. Franchise it out.
- [43:51]
Spencer Haws
Yeah, we do five cities now, you know, or whatever. So. But yeah, yeah, super interesting. You know, email newsletters as a business.
- [43:59]
Nick Loper
Yeah. And we've got a few newsletter based episodes that went with Ryan on the local side. We've done. Cody Sanchez has been on the show like early on in her journey, this, you know, journey to her first like 50,000 subscribers. So definitely a viable model there. If, you know, if the websites are going to be a little more difficult, there's other ways to monetize that content, other ways to create and share that content. The next one on my list is what I'm calling everything as a service. You know, you can't just pay for something now. You got to pay for it every month. And I don't know if this is, you know, the product of Netflix or product of, you know, everything is just, it's a tiny amount, it's just a little bit. And it becomes from the consumer side, like almost, hey, sure, I can afford that. But at a certain point it's like the death by a thousand paper cuts. It's like, oh, it's just one more. There's one more little SaaS tool to add on. But from the entrepreneur's standpoint, it's almost baked into your pricing model. This Assumption that it's going to be a recurring monthly thing. And so you can lean into that and get people used to, used to paying for your thing over and over again.
- [45:05]
Spencer Haws
Yep. Yeah. And I was just looking at a perfect example of this, a hosting company, you know, where usually, you know, in the past you might get a domain along with your, you know, hosting package. But now a lot of hosting companies, you get a full website builder, you know, that's a visual builder. You get the hosting, you get the domain. Now some are offering AI tools. You get an AI image generator, you get an AI, you know, writer, you get, you know, an AI blogging tool. You get it. You know, it's like everything to like run your online business now. And it's just one friendly, you know, monthly fee. Right. But, but yeah, I'm seeing that more and more as, you know, these, these companies that are building in lots of tools and it's like, well, I'll just, you know, spend 10 bucks a month to do all that then, I guess.
- [45:56]
Nick Loper
Yeah, yeah. Makes sense if you're, you know, providing a consistent service. If there's a community element to what you're doing. Like, hey, you know, it's 50 bucks a month, it's a hundred bucks a month.
- [46:06]
Spencer Haws
Month.
- [46:07]
Nick Loper
Stay a member of this community. We've seen people doing paid newsletters. Sure, the free newsletter tier offers this, this and this. But you know, the paid tier offers, you know, a way, you're just seeing the tip of the iceberg. So here's, you know, more in depth, you know, curated content, whatever is behind the paywall. We talked about it in the context of little micro SaaS, projects, software tools, lots of different ways to go about it, but thinking of that recurring revenue first versus a one off purchase. And this relates to the online course thing too. It's like, hey, I'm going to collect $200 one time upfront payment. You got lifetime access to the thing. We've seen a little bit of a shift and maybe it's the entrepreneurs getting a little more savvy. Well, that's great for my launch, but then what happens 12 months later? It's like I keep having to serve these people over and over again without collecting any additional revenue. So we've seen people shift that pricing model to more of a community based or add a recurring element to it. It.
- [47:02]
Spencer Haws
Yep. I think that's smart business. Anytime you can add recurring revenue, I think that's smart business.
- [47:08]
Nick Loper
Cool. Oh, you got another one?
- [47:10]
Spencer Haws
Yeah, I do. I've got a couple more. This is I don't know if you call this a side Hustle trend other than I've seen this opportunity and I haven't seen it talked about a lot. I don't know if it's been covered on the side Hustle show. Maybe it has been. So forgive me if this has been mentioned, but people are publishing content on msn. So I don't know if you've seen small publishers, you know, msn.com, truly msn.com. right. A lot of older people tend to still have that as their homepage. It gets millions and millions of views every month. But you can be a publisher to contribute content to msn. And I just had a buddy just this last month, he's had a few things go really viral and he made just over $20,000 just from publishing on MSN. Right. And so it's one of these really unique opportunities you can apply to get your website approved. So if your organic traffic is going down from Google, well, you can publish content on msn.com they're still getting a ton of direct traffic. Right. And the population of viewers on MSN is probably skews a little bit older. And so if you have content that does really well in that demographic, you can get millions of views. Right. So it's. I've heard of lots of people doing this, but I happen to have a buddy that's been giving me updates over this last month. He's doing really, really well.
- [48:38]
Nick Loper
Yeah, we're a part of the MSN publishing program. Microsoft Start program, it was maybe called early on. It may have changed. We've never had anything go that viral. But, you know, I think our best month is maybe 150, 200 bucks a month. So it's not, it's not 20,000, but it's another place to syndicate the content that you're already creating for pretty low lift. One of the strategies that was shared with me is like, if you can somehow like sync your RSS feed and I don't know, I've got like a lot of short code and stuff in my posts where it's like, I don't know if that would look right or, I don't know, maybe they would strip that out. But if you can syndicate your RSS and like, if you're creating listicles, like the top 12 ways to make money online in 2025, like, it will create like a gallery. And so people have to page through obnoxious from the user standpoint. But MSN's racking up more page views. Racking up more ad views. Right. And so that's going to improve your take your rev share from that content versus having a scrollable list post.
- [49:41]
Spencer Haws
Yep. And I think a lot of people are now publishing content directly just on msn. It's not even on their website. Right. And so you can create these like image carousels or video, I can't remember what they're called. There's a particular thing that you can get that it's really just on MSN that you have to scroll through these 10 images. And so anyways, kind of an interesting opportunity that's been around for a long time, but I've seen several people doing really well recently with it still.
- [50:09]
Nick Loper
Yeah, it's one of the income streams for side Hustle Nation. But maybe there's a way like everything, there's a way to triple down on the thing and really go for it.
- [50:19]
Spencer Haws
You just got to pick the one that you're going to go all in on. Right. It's hard to do them all.
- [50:23]
Nick Loper
Yeah. Publish 10 times a day or whatever it's going to take. I remember talking with John Dykstra a few months ago. He's like, I really double down on email. When you say double down, what do you mean? He's like, I send three emails a day. It's like, Jesus. Oh, okay, okay.
- [50:38]
Spencer Haws
We're over here doing one or two a week.
- [50:40]
Nick Loper
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Next on my list is a service based side hustle observation and that is the increase in acceptance for fractional support or maybe a buzzword around fractional support. Fractional cto, Fractional cfo. Stuff like this, where if you have expertise in a particular field, that calling yourself the fractional person, I think elevates you above, hey, I'm your freelance accountant or I'm your freelance bookkeeper. No, I'm going to be your fractional cfo. And I think it allows you to command higher rates, higher prices and plus, people are maybe becoming more willing to hire that type of person or agree to a contractor relationship with that type of person. Lends itself really well to niche agencies, niche productized service providers.
- [51:31]
Spencer Haws
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we see this all the time. You know, from a user perspective, if I go to upwork and I'm looking to hire somebody and I get people that apply that are sort of generalists. Right. They say, oh, I can do this, I can do this, I can do this. You know, I can do it all versus somebody that says, I create financial spreadsheets in Google sheets and that is what I do. Right. You're going to hire that guy. If you're looking for a financial spreadsheet and you're going to pay way more. Yeah, I'm going to be willing to. Right. I'm like $30 an hour versus the $10 an hour guy. But I'm going to do it because that's what you do. So if you can be a specialist, you know, in your field and sort of market yourself as either the fractional or, you know, I am the go to email newsletter optimization person or whatever it is, you're going to command that higher price.
- [52:20]
Nick Loper
Yeah, exactly. I'm the go to person for viral Facebook partner program content in your niche.
- [52:28]
Spencer Haws
Exactly. And that person does exist. I know who that is. And they have a thriving business.
- [52:34]
Nick Loper
Very good, very good. The next one on my list is what I'm calling Influencer marketing partners or influencer co founders, where almost like you might have a technical co founder, now you might have an influencer co founder or influencer partner. And at the very top of the food chain you have Mr. Beast and Feastables and stuff. But like even lower down, we've had examples of e commerce sellers on the podcast, you know, kind of tapping into this really, really broad segment of what they called micro influencers. People with like 500, a thousand, up to maybe 10, 20,000 followers. Like not super viral accounts, but they've got people paying attention to them. They have been in the content creation game. They know how to make something compelling and sending them samples of the product and really leaning into that as a marketing channel versus trying to go out and, you know, find traffic and buyers the other way or other through other channels.
- [53:32]
Spencer Haws
I mean, it's smart, right? Because a lot of times if you have a product, you've got a good idea, you have zero followers. If you can kind of skip that whole step of building things up over the years and partner with somebody that already has that influence, already has that following, it's like almost a guarantee key way to launch to success. Now you just have to be willing to either give up a piece of your business or give up, you know, revenue of the business. And you don't figure out a model that works well for you. But I think it's a smart business for influencers that, hey, there, there are a lot of people that have tons of followers, but they don't have any good business ideas. Like they just, you know, they have influence.
- [54:10]
Nick Loper
Yeah.
- [54:11]
Spencer Haws
And then there's other people that have really good ideas. They just, they don't have any influence. So if you can partner that up, up. It's a. It's a cool model.
- [54:19]
Nick Loper
Yeah, we've seen it from the standpoint of, hey, we'll. We'll give you affiliate commission for everyone that you sell, like through Amazon creator connections or whatever. Or we'll just send you free product or we'll pay you a flat fee to create this type of video. But lots of different ways to structure it. But kind of the. The secret sauce seemed to be either casting that really wide net, okay, I'm going to send out a thousand messages to these different accounts, or finding that one really influential partner to bring in who, you know, can drive consistent traffic. And it was on my first million where Sean was pitching this virtual assistant company for a while, and it was like he bought a stake in that and then turned around and used his influence from the podcast to drive customers to that business.
- [55:08]
Spencer Haws
Yeah, really, really, really smart.
- [55:10]
Nick Loper
All right, what's next?
- [55:11]
Spencer Haws
All right, this might be my last one that I have here, and I don't know if I'm seeing it as a trend, but it's something that I'm going to try a little bit. And I could see this developing into a trend. You tell me, you know, whether it is or not, but actually going the other way. More people are going, more online, more AI, more technology, going the other way, going back to physical products, items you can touch, you know, feel. So one thing that I am actually going to be trying is reselling items on ebay. This, you know, has been around for how many decades now?
- [55:50]
Nick Loper
Yeah, every. Everything that's old is new again.
- [55:53]
Spencer Haws
Everything that's old is new again. So part of the reason I'm doing this, I do have older kids that are looking for summer jobs. And so I'm like, what's something that teenagers can run? And so we just went out this weekend and we bought Amazon return pallets. I actually picked them up at a liquidation warehouse.
- [56:11]
Nick Loper
Is it the. Where you bin store, somebody? I was like, that's a fantastic name for this bin sale place. But because I know it's in eastern Washington somewhere.
- [56:17]
Spencer Haws
Oh, okay. No, there actually is in the Tri Cities. It's not a bin store, but it's actually. This guy has a bunch of contracts where he. I mean, he had like 300 pallets of just Amazon returns, Walmart return, you know, big box store returns. We bought three of them. We're gonna unpack it, try and resell it on ebay. So it's not a new business, but I feel like going back to the basics of, like, there's gonna Be stuff that people are gonna wanna buy for cheaper than they can get in the store forever. That's never going away. So the trend of going to a business that isn't going to be as impacted by all the technological changes, I think is a smart trend.
- [57:02]
Nick Loper
Yeah, exactly. The local plumbing service is not worried about AI. You know, he's not going to come. The computers aren't going to come and fix your pipes.
- [57:10]
Spencer Haws
Yep, exactly.
- [57:11]
Nick Loper
If nothing else, you'll get, you'll get some content about the pallet, pallet flipping, pallet return business.
- [57:17]
Spencer Haws
That's exactly right. Right. So I'm hoping I get a summer job for my kids, maybe get some good content for me. I expect to make approximately $0 on this business. I'm hoping that my kids, you know, earn some money. But who knows, maybe it becomes profitable. We'll see. I mean that would be ideal. Yeah, but if I can break even on it, I'm happy.
- [57:36]
Nick Loper
No, that's a good way to expose them to this. Buy low, sell high. And is it worth the work of picking through all these things, listing individual items? Like there's a lot that goes into it and it sounds like kind of luck of the draw and what's, you know, you don't get to see everything that's in that pallet before you get it. But we do have an episode on palette return item palette flipping. Just because it's something that comes up on people's side hustle lists. I'm curious about it. And somebody was making it work. But similar, they made a couple, maybe 25 grand over the course of a year or two in doing it. But if they didn't, it sounded like if they didn't have the YouTube video of themselves filming doing it, it's like, I don't know if we would really, it would be really worthwhile. But that's a cool way. And I do want to piggyback on your. Well, what are the things that AI isn't going to impact or take away? And part of that is this shift towards maybe a shift in interest towards local services. The window washing businesses, the house cleaning businesses, the power washing companies, the mobile car detailing, these blue collar type of side hustles where you could start relatively low cost, relatively low risk and don't even need like if you have any level of digital marketing savvy, you're probably going to be head and shoulders above the entrenched competition. I think that's definitely a trend worth mentioning because we've seen more and more young people, especially young people being Interested in those types of businesses like low tech, good old fashioned elbow grease. Go do the work and get paid for it.
- [59:12]
Spencer Haws
Yeah, I think a lot of us that have been in the online world for so long, we see all these shifts and these change and it's frustrating. We're like, oh, how are we going to make, you know, this online business work? Well, there's this whole other world out there, right, where you can go knock on a door and you can, you know, meet people in person and you know, have a real phone number where people call you. Like there's so many opportunities for side hustles, whether it's local or, you know, in person or just, you know, the non online business that, hey, there's a lot of things that people need and we'll always need that won't be impacted by these huge technological shifts.
- [59:55]
Nick Loper
Yep, very true, Spencer. This has been awesome. I don't know how many we were up to. I think definitely more than 10 at this point. So probably a good place, good place to wrap, but we delivered on our promise and hopefully a little bit extra on top of that. But what's next for you? Any projects going on? What's the latest with Niche Pursuits?
- [60:12]
Spencer Haws
Yeah, I mentioned the one. Hey, I'm kind of starting a little side business with, with my, with my kids. So that's gonna be fun. That's kind of something I'm dabbling with the whole palette flipping idea but going all in on YouTube videos. My YouTube channel's done pretty decent. So where I talk a lot about different website ideas that might still be working. The type of trends that are still working online. So covering a lot of that on my YouTube videos. Other than that, no, no big shakeups, you know, with, with what I'm going to be doing. I just keep publishing some content on YouTube. Got my Facebook page going. I have a little Amazon influencer, you know, side hustle. I've got, you know, videos there. So, you know, kind of keep dabbling on a few little side hustles, keep the niche pursuits brand going and we'll see where it goes from there.
- [61:02]
Nick Loper
I get the impression that, you know, that may be similar. You probably don't need to work anymore. You've been doing this for a long time. You've had some exits under your belt. Like you've had some, some fantastic earning years and months. Is there a retirement plan or do you just keep doing this because you love doing it?
- [61:19]
Spencer Haws
Yeah, you know, I'm still enjoying things, but I am very much. I've removed a lot of Things from my business that I don't enjoy. So I do have the opportunity and the ability, like, you know, my Facebook page, va. I'm not going to go in and post things 10 or 15 times a day. Right. So I do enjoy the strategy of coming up with ideas and trying to plug in a system or people that can run it for me. So I enjoy that. So I'll keep doing that. You know, I'm actually, I volunteer at a local pickleball organization. We have a pickleball community.
- [61:52]
Nick Loper
Okay.
- [61:52]
Spencer Haws
Right. So I'm looking for more volunteer opportunities, maybe work a little bit less. But still, hey, I like the excitement of, hey, there's this cool new idea. Can we make it work? So I haven't quite retired yet, Nick, but I'll, I'll let you know. But I'm doing all I can not to work quite as much, let's put it that way.
- [62:13]
Nick Loper
Fair enough. You know, the love of the game, parse out the stuff that you don't like and keep what you do. Yeah, that's, you know, try and play in that same space. So very cool. Nichepursuits.com check them out over there. Check out the Niche Pursuits podcast. We'll link up the YouTube channel as well. Like I said, going all in on YouTube. More and more guests are saying, hey, I'm leaning in on the YouTube stuff, doing more videos. If the website isn't working as well, I can make videos. And it's a lot of fun too. Thanks so much for joining me. I think this was a blast. If you're listening to this and you want to make some extra money and you're not sure which path to take, I want to invite you to take our free quiz at Hustle Show. You can do it right from your phone. It'll take a couple minutes or less. And then based on your answers, we're going to give you a custom curated playlist to hopefully put you in the right direction. These are going to be 8 to 10 side hustle show episodes based on your answers. Hey, what should we listen to next? And if you want more Spencer in your life, you can go listen to, you know, his three or four side Hustle show appearances as well. But Hustle show, that's your personalized playlist quiz. And just again, a few short questions about your interests and goals and you can get that personalized playlist, add it to your device, learn what works, and then go out and make some more money. Big thanks to Spencer for sharing his insights. Night thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone. As always, you can hit upsidehustlenation.comdeals for all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place. 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.