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- [00:00]
Nick Loper
Look, adulting can be a challenge, but there is an easy button for at least one item on your to do list. Our partner PolicyGenius makes finding and buying life insurance simple to make sure your loved ones have a financial safety net in case something happens to you. With Policygenius you can find life insurance policies starting at just $276 a year for a million dollars in coverage. It's an easy way to protect the people you love and feel good about the future. How it works is policygenius lets you compare quotes from America's top insurers, complete with coverage, amounts, prices and terms all in just a few clicks. No games, no guesswork. And with thousands of five star reviews on Google and trustpilot from customers who found the best policy fit for their needs, policygenius is the country's leading online insurance marketplace. Secure your family's future with Policygenius. Head to Policygenius.com to compare free life insurance quotes free from top companies and see how much you could save. That's policygenius.com and now onto the show. 10 recurring revenue side Hustles what's up? What's up? Nick Loper here. Welcome to the side Hustle show because your 9 to 5 may make you a living, but your 5 to 9 makes you alive. Now, one nice thing about that 9 to 5, though, it's that predictable steady monthly paycheck. But your day job isn't the only way to bring in consistent income. Which is why today I want to share 10 realistic recurring revenue side hustles, starting with the one that's at the top of everyone's list, software. And while AI has certainly made creating your own software easier, one of our most popular recurring revenue episodes was with an entrepreneur who took an even simpler approach. Simply white labeling someone else's software that meant no startup or development costs meant great margins. And just like SaaS, just like software as a service. Monthly recurrence revenue For Chris LELINI in episode 494, he found this reputation management software he liked, the kind that helps small businesses collect more positive customer reviews. And then all he had to do was go out and sell it.
- [02:06]
Chris Lelini
We live in a very transactional world. If your approach is to probe and interrogate, most people aren't going to sign up for that, right? Nobody's going to raise their hand and be like, yeah, I'd love you to kind of sniff out my issues and my problems and show them to me and then, you know, use that to leverage into a sale of some sort, right? I Think if you come in sort of adding value, saying, hey, you know, we've been talking with all these people in the industry and here's what we found are the main challenges and what our recommendation is, you know, xyz, here's a quick little white paper of a couple of case studies that we've done that might be helpful for you. Right. I think that begs the opportunity for a relationship or a conversation to start, like you're saying. So, yeah, no, that's, that's, that's the way is just adding value from the beginning.
- [02:46]
Nick Loper
Now, given that it's software, you don't have to stay local to your geographic area. You could. You could target customers all over the place. Is that something that you have found? Yeah.
- [02:56]
Chris Lelini
Oh, yeah. And that's really one of the beauties of software as a service, to be honest with you, is that, you know, you don't have a brick and mortar storefront where your catchment area is, you know, only within, you know, 50 square miles or something like that. You know, people's willingness to travel. And I've got clients, you know, down in California and Texas and Florida and New Hampshire, you know, and Kansas, you know, they're all over the country. I don't know how many, you know, of the 50 states I have clients in, but a significant number. And the power, too, is like, you know, with everything being so digital, right. And these conferences being all over the place. I mean, I'll just give an example. I got a painter client of mine who's local here, but he attends a mastermind group where there's painters from New Jersey in IT and there's painters from, you know, Texas in it. Right. So that. That makes a referral to somebody in New Jersey. That painter in New Jersey knows an electrician who knows a plumber, and it just sort of organically spreads that way. And that's really kind of the power of it, which is also, to be honest with you, why it's kind of exciting. You know, my wife and I have actually been kind of, you know, contemplating moving out of the Pacific Northwest now that we've got two kids. And, you know that we've got a certain sense of freedom. Right. Although I have a pretty significant established network here.
- [03:59]
Eric Dingler
Right.
- [03:59]
Chris Lelini
There's nothing stopping me from picking up and moving to a different state because most of the relationships I've built, most people haven't even seen me, to be honest with you. It's always fun when I meet them at a networking event and I'm like, hey, you're actually A client of mine, they're like, really? And I'm like, yeah, do you remember? Do you recognize the voice? And they're like, oh, my God. Right? So anyways, that's always kind of fun too.
- [04:17]
Nick Loper
Yeah, that's how you can live the location, independent lifestyle at this point.
- [04:22]
Chris Lelini
Yeah, exactly.
- [04:23]
Nick Loper
Are you comfortable giving a sense of the size of the business today in terms of revenue on a, I guess, monthly basis?
- [04:29]
Chris Lelini
If that's how you track it, it's multiple six figures. And the profit margins are extremely healthy. And so, you know, the good majority of that goes right into my pocket. Right. And you know, we have, we've been growing every single year. Well, with the exception of 2020, where we. We were, you know, like 0.9% down. Right. But compared to most businesses, that was, that was a, that was pretty, A pretty awesome year.
- [04:54]
Nick Loper
So, yeah, if you can walk away from 2020 essentially flat, like, oh, we'll call that a win.
- [05:00]
Stephen Faust
Exactly.
- [05:01]
Chris Lelini
Okay, so, but, but like, for instance, you know, last year we grew our MRR, our monthly recurring revenue, by 50%. My goal is to build. To grow it another 50% because kids are expensive. I don't know if anybody told you.
- [05:12]
Nick Loper
That, but I know everybody talks about saving for college. It's like, no, you got to save for, like, daycare and preschool. So you mentioned mrr. Is that among the metrics that you're paying most attention to? I guess churn would probably be part of that. But what's. What do you look for in the kind of a dashboard reporting?
- [05:29]
Chris Lelini
Yeah, monthly recurring revenue is really the key. The churn, it just, it really isn't there. I mean, I, I will lose a couple of customers. You know, some months. I don't lose any customers. Right. But, you know, it can be as much as like two, three in a month, which is not significant. Right. For me. And so I'm just, I'm constantly, always kind of replacing them with, you know, with at least that and then plus some. Right. So, yeah, that's mainly the metrics that I, you know, follow again.
- [05:56]
Nick Loper
That was Chris lelini from episode 4. 94. And it was funny. We've done a bunch of episodes on white labeling physical products for E commerce, for Amazon, but never digital ones. And so that episode got a lot of attention because he was able to buy seats or licenses to this software at essentially wholesale prices and then resell it at retail, making that margin in the middle and providing a layer of support and consultation for customers. Now, like we've said on the show before, if you want Recurring revenue. You gotta solve a recurring problem. And the Next side Hustle is a great example of that. This is from my chat with Erica Krupen from Krupen's Poopin Scoopin. Yes, it's a pet waste removal business in episode 614, one of the common themes on the show. Hey, you want recurring revenue, gotta solve a recurring problem. This definitely checks that box, right? As long as that dog is in that house, they're going to have this problem. And so I imagine the customer base tends to be pretty sticky. And if you start to canvas the neighborhood with these yard signs, people learn the brand and the reputation, and they know who to call when they have this issue. But I remember, I think we were Talking about maybe 15 bucks a week, 15 to 18 bucks a week, early on. And it sounds like pricing has grown or pricing has increased a little bit since then. Talk to me about that process. Or you just play the inflation card. Say, hey, look, costs are up everywhere. You know, we got to do it, too. Sorry for the inconvenience. What happens there?
- [07:20]
Erica Krupen
So when I talked to you back in. What was it, 2020, I think I was only charging $55 a month, which boiled down to, like, 1375 a week. And that was just enough to pay me. And I had my little cobalt with my magnets, but quickly learned that I needed to raise my prices. So gradually I started to raise. And how I did that was when I was getting new customers. They would get the new rates because I was still kind of scared to raise my old customers like my original 12.
- [07:50]
Nick Loper
Okay.
- [07:50]
Erica Krupen
But as I started collecting data, as I started researching vehicles, new branding, I quickly realized that I needed to up my prices. And it was scary. It really was. But I've raised my prices several times now. I meant, like, $99 a month about. That's the average ticket price for the customer. The last time I did the rate increase, I just sent out a letter and just said, hey, I got to raise my prices. This is what it is. This is what's going on. This is what's to be expected, and this is how it's going to roll out. So I'm very, like, detailed with my letters, and if they have any questions or concerns, I have the conversation with them and just explain that I needed to raise my prices for X, Y, and Z. And if they wanted to cancel service, I completely understood.
- [08:35]
Liz Wilcox
And.
- [08:36]
Erica Krupen
And some did, some did. But because I was able to bring on thousands more a month, it balanced out. It was okay.
- [08:44]
Nick Loper
So number two on our list is what I'm calling a local subscription service. Side hustle and cleaning businesses like Erica's a perfect example of this, because stuff just keeps getting dirty. It could be a weekly pet waste cleanup business like Erica's. It could be a daily commercial cleaning service. We've even seen guests getting paid to sweep up litter from parking lots as a recurring service. House cleaning examples where the business owner contracted with other cleaners to fulfill the work and built a little house cleaning agency. The other example of a local subscription service we had recently was Chef Jessica's personal chef service, where she said a typical rate might be 500 bucks a week per client, with clients tending to stick around for a long time after they get used to this luxury service in their house. She even had a line in our episode about a client referring to her as like the furniture, meaning she wasn't going anywhere. She was part of the house. And just because you sold a subscription service doesn't mean you necessarily need to be the one doing the actual work all the time, because I get that pushback as well. Hey, it sounds like I just signed myself up for another job. But in that episode with Erica, she talked about bringing on other team members to help with the actual scooping so she could focus on marketing and operations. So that's number two, the local subscription service. And next on my list is a similar strategy, but taking it online. The example here is Eric Dingler's digital marketing agency, where his local SEO services can be $500 a month or more. But we've seen productized service offerings in everything from content writing to graphic design to video editing and probably others that are escaping my memory right now. But recurring revenue comes from solving that recurring problem. In Eric's case, the Google ranking engine is constantly changing, constantly evolving. So clients outsource that work to his team so they can stay on top of it, and the business owner doesn't have to worry about it.
- [10:36]
Eric Dingler
But for our monthly recurring where we go and we say, hey, listen, we can manage this for you and we can write content. We need to have a strategy session once a quarter where I come in and I interview you about your bar. How long have they been here? How long have they been like, this is where you get into the nitty gritty. And we do a quarterly strategy session and we got any specials coming up. Next three months. Anything you want to put, like, you have a seasonality to your business in the next three months is where somebody like, oh, back to school is big for us. Valentine's Day is big. Okay? Great. So then you create that content calendar and at this point you'll get a tool where like now you're going to create the content and post it. So it's automated and done for three months, things like that. Or better yet, how I do it is I now have a team that does this. I've got an amazing person on my team from El Salvador. She's a rock star. And this is all she does for us. She only does local SEO content. She creates a. She meets with the clients once a quarter, does a strategy session, maps out their content. She can do two of these a day. And we typically charge around $750 a month for the ongoing monthly recurring revenue. But again, I grew into that. So this is local SEO. It's not going away.
- [12:01]
Nick Loper
But that's, no, that's like really, really cool to see what is potentially possible down the road with a trained up team member who is taking half a day to service this customer that you're charging $750 a month for. You imagine the margins on that are quite healthy.
- [12:18]
Eric Dingler
Yes. Even if you hired somebody in the States. I have one person on my team in the States, but the rest of my team are remote. We're an entire remote. I'm remote.
- [12:26]
Nick Loper
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [12:27]
Eric Dingler
You know, so my team is remote. Yeah. And we just, that's how we, we operate because we are able to keep in very high margins. We're able to keep our costs very competitive that way. And it's fun to be able to travel around the world and meet your staff.
- [12:40]
Nick Loper
Do you worry? This is the Bezos line of. Your margin is my opportunity. Do you see clients getting poached from under you, from other competing services or. It's just like the number of small businesses is so vast, so massive, that's like, well, even if we lose a client, it's fine. We'll go find somebody else. You try to play this game of churn versus retention and margins versus like, well, wait a minute, how much does this really cost them to fulfill?
- [13:09]
Chris Lelini
Yeah.
- [13:09]
Eric Dingler
If you show up every month with a report that's showing results, hey, we got you these results. That's you. Most business owners, that's the number one complaint I get when we get a new customer. We were spending all this money. I never knew if it was working.
- [13:25]
Nick Loper
Got it.
- [13:26]
Eric Dingler
You know, I didn't know where the results were because in the agency world, we're known for just sending a report, expecting our clients to read it. They don't have time for that. We show up proactively hey, we just looked. You're at this and we just tell people. We might call a client and say, hey, we just ran your report and you know, on average we've dropped three positions. And we use that. We use we, not you, not. You know, it's, it's, we're in this together. Hey, we dropped three points. And so we looked and here's what we'd like to do. We'd like to do this and this and this over the next six weeks. And they're just like, hey man, you've got our back. Whatever you need to do. Like, because it just. You build trust. You build trust. And for us then Nick, how this led to then the. I had no intentions to own an agency. I was pastoring a church and my wife and I decided to adopt a sibling group from Bulgaria. We had two biological children and we just felt like the next thing we were being called to do was adopt. And I had to come up with an extra $50,000 because we wanted to adopt debt free.
- [14:31]
Nick Loper
Okay.
- [14:32]
Eric Dingler
I didn't know how I was going to come up with $50,000, so I had to come up with a side hustle. And I knew how to build websites and so I started building websites and that kind of got a little bit of traction. And I got a couple dozen clients and then I learned about this local SEO and I just went back and I upsold my very first client to do it. I was like, hey, I'm testing this thing and you know, da, da, da. And they're like, yeah, okay, sure. And I was like, at $1300. And they're like, yeah, sure, let's do it. I'm like great. And then I went to some businesses I didn't even know. I did the same thing. And I did that. And then I start. And then I worked through my network, my local business network, onboarded all the low hanging fruit and then we started to learn how to do another service. And so I just went back through and I said, hey, we're now doing reviews as a service. We can help you get more 5 star reviews from your satisfied customers. Oh yeah, Eric, let's do that again.
- [15:30]
Nick Loper
That's Eric dingler from episode 684 just a couple months ago. High value recurring service. Eric also touched on something crucial. Showing up proactively with results in the agency world. That's what is separating the long term winners from the churn and burn operators. I've got more recurring revenue side hustles coming up right after this. You know when you're shopping online and you see that little purple shop pay button at checkout. That's a sign that the store you're on is one of the millions of businesses powered by our partner Shopify. Shopify makes it incredibly easy to start and run your business. For starters, you don't even have to start from scratch. They've got hundreds of beautiful ready to go proven to convert templates that you can adapt to your brand's style without needing to know how to code. You can tackle all your most important tasks in one place, from managing your inventory to tracking payments to analytics and more. Plus, Shopify helps you make sales with built in marketing and email tools to go out and find new customers and keep the ones you've got. If you want to see less carts being abandoned, it's time to head over to Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at Shopify. Go to shopify.com sidehustle shopify.com sidehustleen with our partner Mint Mobile, you can get the wireless coverage and speed you're used to, but for way less money. I think that's a win we could all use right about now and you can keep your same phone number. Plus, for a limited time, Mint Mobile is offering side hustle show listeners three months of unlimited premium wireless service for just 15 bucks a month. All Mint plans come with high speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. I've been a customer since 2019 and haven't looked back this year. Skip breaking a sweat and breaking the bank. Get this new customer offer and your 3 month unlimited wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month@mintmobile.com Sidehustle that's mintmobile.com Sidehustle upfront payment of $45 required, equivalent to $15 per month limited time new customer offer for first 3 months only. Speeds may slow above 35 GB on unlimited plan. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. We're talking through 10 recurring revenue side hustles in this episode and so far we've covered white labeling software or software as a service. If you're so inclined, maybe do the vibe coding thing. A local subscription service through the lens of Erica Krupen's pooper scooper business and an online subscription service as through the lens of Eric Dingler's local SEO service. But next up is, by the numbers, one of the most popular side hustles in the world, and that's rental property investing. One property can pay you month after Month, year after year. And you can slowly build this cash flow and long term wealth. But where it really becomes a ticket to early financial independence is when you start to stack the cash flow from multiple properties. Here's Dustin Heiner from episode 691.
- [18:40]
Dustin Heiner
So I started investing back in 2006, bought my first property. It made me money in cash flow every single month. I said, great, I gotta get 10 of those. So if I make it $300 a month on with one property, then that's $3,000 a month with 10 properties.
- [18:53]
Nick Loper
That's great.
- [18:54]
Dustin Heiner
Just like if you find a good side hustle, you just replicate that same thing over and over again. So fast forward now to where we're at now. I have over 30 properties that me money, I still own the ones that I bought back in 2006. First property is always the hardest because you got to prove it to yourself that it works, you got to get the money, you have to build the business, all that sort of stuff coached, I don't know, maybe over a thousand students now how to invest in real estate. And like clockwork, they get their first property and we can go into the entire business building process to where it can scale, where you can get to 10 properties in 10 years. And I think honestly, even faster because you do all the work on the front end. Just like building a side hustle. The second property comes so much faster because all that work is paying off in the future. So my daughter, she's 16 years old, just bought her first property three months ago. It's making $300 a month and this is the plan that I have for her. Buy one property, get that passive income coming in every single month, $300, do not spend it. Like, do not go out and buy this or buy that or you know, whatever.
- [19:51]
Nick Loper
That's maybe the discipline part of this. Like I got some of this cash flow and I'm going to parlay that into the next thing.
- [19:57]
Dustin Heiner
Absolutely. And so every year we focus on buying at least one more property. And then over 10 years, if you do that 10 years, you have 10 properties and hopefully each one are making 3, 4, $500 a month or more in passive income.
- [20:13]
Nick Loper
Now I like Dustin's call to focus on cash flow from day one, not appreciation and to put the key players in place before you ever buy that first property. In his case, that's property management, contractors, handypersons, realtors, mortgage brokers. Fun fact, real estate was actually one of my first side hustles where I followed pretty much none of Dustin's advice and had only $100 a month cash flow cushion on that property. Was banking almost entirely on appreciation. Ended up working out, but definitely one of those cases where it's better to be lucky than good. But that's real estate. Recurring revenue side hustle. Number four on this list. And maybe we can broaden that even to include other rental businesses. Like we've done episodes on mobility scooters and photo booths and portable hot tubs even now. Similar idea, right? Get paid over and over again from the thing you buy once. And in a lot of cases, the return on investment math is going to be a lot higher for those quote unquote unconventional rental assets. But there's usually just more labor and turnover involved. Nobody's signing a 12 month lease on a photo booth, for example. But sometimes the path to recurring revenue starts with recognizing what you're already good at. For example, Liz Wilcox was doing client work in email marketing, professional copywriter. And she had this realization. Instead of starting over every month trying to find that next project, that next client, what if she could create something that people would pay for month after month? That's number five on our list, a membership program. These typically range from $5 to $100 a month or sometimes even more, depending on what you're offering. Behind the paywall. Here's Liz breaking down her mindset shift and why she chose low cost, just a $9 a month membership over something higher ticket.
- [21:53]
Liz Wilcox
So I sat down and I did a little bit of math of to Nick's point of I don't want to have to start over and over every single month. So what kind of membership can I create and how many people do I need in it to get me to that day rate? Like if I could just book myself with the membership sales one day a week or one day a month? One day a week, the whole calendar. Right. Like future pacing myself and I got really excited. I said, you know, I could do a low cost thing. Cause I've got time, I've got this $20,000. I know I can do client work and I know I could probably do it for a couple more years. I'm going to go low cost because again, that's low responsibility. I have a bunch of responsibility in my home life. I have a bunch of responsibility with my clients. What if I could create for my email list like this really low responsibility thing and just slowly build it up? And I said, okay, if I can get a hundred members at nine dollars, that's nine hundred bucks a month. That's nearly Half a day of my day rate. That sounds doable. So I did it in like a bite sized chunk. That sounds doable. And then within two years, if I could get a thousand people in at $9, that would be $9,000 a month recurring revenue. The way it blew my mind, unlike you, maybe you're listening and you have a 9 to 5, y'.
- [23:20]
Eric Dingler
All.
- [23:20]
Liz Wilcox
I've never had a job before. Like, my last job was at a gas station when I was like 20 years old. And so I've always, like Nick said, every month, I'm always starting over. And I've been doing that my whole life.
- [23:32]
Nick Loper
Yeah, like the mental toll that that can take is. Yeah, it can be stressful.
- [23:36]
Liz Wilcox
It's so stressful. And so I said I could do a couple more years of this low cost thing, this low responsibility thing. And after a couple years, if I could just remove the client work. I know in two years I'm gonna come up with other ideas, other courses, workshops, whatever. But if I could in two years, remove client work. Wow. So I was really willing to be patient. I didn't need the money right then, but I was willing to be patient and wait two years for the payoff. And guess what? It definitely paid off.
- [24:14]
Nick Loper
Sounds like it's working just fine. I want to hit on this. Low cost equals low responsibility, because I think that's an interesting distinction. And we'll get into the numbers behind that because, okay, I got to sell a hundred members at $9. First of all, where am I going to find a hundred people to pay me? It's like, you know, going from zero to $1, I think is more difficult than going from $1 to $100. It's like, well, if I charged a hundred bucks, I'd only need 10 members to get to a thousand bucks. It's like, it seems almost harder. Even though it's like low ticket, it seems almost harder to go out and find that many people and convince them to pull out their credit cards.
- [24:49]
Liz Wilcox
I love that Nick just said this because it just shows you, like, you should create something that makes sense for your brain. Because I wholly disagree with what Nick is saying. Just and not in a negative way, but like, to me, I can get just about anybody to give me $9. I disagree with Nick. I think it's actually pretty simple to go out and find a hundred people. For my personality, it's actually pretty easy for me to be out and to sell people. And I knew that about Liz Wilcox. I knew that I was already building this email list on the side that was my side hustle to the client work.
- [25:26]
Nick Loper
So what do people get for the $9? Like what's behind the paywall?
- [25:29]
Liz Wilcox
I knew the missing piece for people is a weekly newsletter just following up with their subscribers every week. That's something. You're a side hustler. You're just working a few hours a night on this project. Like sending an email. Is that really what you need to be doing with your time? So I knew if I could just write that newsletter for you, maybe you'd give it a shot and you would see results like mine. So within the membership, you just get a weekly newsletter template to take and make your own. That was low responsibility for me because in my client work, that's what I was already doing. I was writing emails for people. I had owned two businesses prior to writing emails to people. I had an entire catalog of emails that I had been writing for years and years and years. I can just have this one deliverable of this thing. I already have a back catalog of that. I can templatize and I can send out once a week. Yeah, I can commit to that for the payoff. In two years, I'm going to be able to retire. Client work over here.
- [26:33]
Nick Loper
Yeah.
- [26:33]
Liz Wilcox
Okay. Yeah, let's try it out.
- [26:36]
Nick Loper
That clip was from episode 600. If you want to go check out that full interview with Liz. Cool example, I think, of selling your sawdust. Like what is a byproduct of the work you're already doing? Could you repackage and sell that to a different audience? But when it comes to memberships, there are different ways to structure it depending on what your ideal member is going to value. The common saying in the online business world is people come for the content, but stay for the community. So maybe you add some level of member interaction through a Facebook group, a private forum, a discord community and a membership could be for a product or a service. You probably subscribe to both in your own life. I'm thinking of Netflix, Costco, The Yoga Studio, Dollar Shave Club, KiwiCo Life Insurance. All kinds of examples of businesses under this recurring revenue membership umbrella. Paid newsletters could be another example. In the online business space, we've heard from entrepreneurs gating certain members only content through a service like Patreon. Oh, and we had one interesting example was the survival podcast. Jack called it the member support brigade. I think it was basically an annual discount club that he put together for his listeners. Like, hey, you're probably going to want these products anyway. So I went out, negotiated a special deal for you, and you can get access to all of those deals for, you know, an annual membership fee. So when we spoke, I don't think there was a community element to that offer at all where listeners could interact with each other. It was just structured as like a discount club. So I've long contemplated putting together some kind of membership offer for side Hustle Nation, but it's a, it's a case of analysis paralysis. Not sure the best way to make it really compelling and valuable for you. I'm open to ideas. Send me a note, let me know what you think about that. But memberships are number five on our list of 10 recurring revenue side Hustles. Lots of examples of those in the archives if you want to dive deeper on that topic. Number six is websites, which used to be fairly straightforward. Build up a body of informational content in a given niche, rank that site in Google, and then earn relatively predictable, relatively passive income from advertising and affiliate relationships. Those types of informational content sites have been having a hard time lately, and this includes Site Hustle Nation. My earnings from just straight up SEO have taken a huge hit, but websites can still be a recurring revenue asset. One model that we've seen to be a little more AI resistant is directory websites, which might sound kind of old school, but in our recent episode with Frey Chu, he proves there's still good money to be made with directories. The key is finding underserved niches and then building something genuinely useful with some value added data. Because after all, if people can get everything they need from Google Maps, there's no real reason to come to your directory. So the value add, you got to have some extra layer of data that you're providing that Google is not. But here's frey from episode 692 on the Money milestone for his first directory, which was in the thrifting niche.
- [29:35]
Frey Chu
Six months in, I randomly just pulled up the Google Analytics and noticed there were a thousand people coming to that website that day. And I just remember staring at it for five minutes and being like, what is going on? Like how. Where is this traffic coming from?
- [29:51]
Nick Loper
Yeah. Is this real? Yeah.
- [29:53]
Frey Chu
At that time I was like kind of a noob at SEO too. I was relearning or just learning all the basics. So I was thinking, oh, maybe I did something correct. And I started putting ads that following month and the traffic kind of steadily came in and I made $1,200 that month with. Without really doing anything. It was just putting up ads.
- [30:12]
Nick Loper
Was this just adsense?
- [30:14]
Frey Chu
Yeah, I, I actually end up using Ezoic. That was the media partner that I used. And now I'm using mediavine Grow, which is kind of my. My go to ad partner now.
- [30:24]
Nick Loper
Okay, so you built the thing and then kind of sat on it like, I guess let it age potentially in the search results and establish some domain. I don't do anything proactively to market it during those six months or just like, log in one day. Hey, it actually is getting traffic.
- [30:39]
Frey Chu
I did post on Reddit, and I talk about that a lot.
- [30:41]
Nick Loper
Every.
- [30:41]
Frey Chu
Every time I finish an entire directory build, I always find a niche subreddit, and I'll make a post. It'll basically sound like, hey, I made a website to make XYZ easier or to find X, Y and Z locations easier. And, yeah, that's kind of the only thing that I did. It was responsible for maybe like a few hundred people coming to the website because that Reddit post performed really well, and people still commented to it on this day, you know, a couple years later. But, yeah, really not. Nothing much, nothing too fancy was done.
- [31:14]
Nick Loper
All right, well, maybe we can pull it back and say, what attracted you to this business model?
- [31:18]
Frey Chu
I think every entrepreneur goes through this moment where they either struggle to start something or start something and realize that's not the thing that they want. So in my case, I was running a footwear business. I was closing it down. Super depressed, very low point of my entrepreneurial life. And I realized what I really wanted was a business with five things, and it was something that was scalable, something cheap to start, something remote where I didn't have to, like, go to a warehouse and pack shoes and ship it to customers, something with high margin and something that could be sold as an asset. And I scoured the Internet for these businesses. Very difficult to find. I found two.
- [31:56]
Nick Loper
Yeah, this is a little bit of a unicorn. Like something that checks all those boxes.
- [31:59]
Frey Chu
Totally. So I found. I think I landed on SaaS or websites, and I'm not a coder, so, you know, and this was kind of pre. Like this early AI chatgpt.
- [32:10]
Nick Loper
Yeah, pre AI vibe coding stuff.
- [32:11]
Frey Chu
Exactly.
- [32:12]
Nick Loper
Yeah.
- [32:12]
Frey Chu
The vibe coding was not a thing yet. So I landed on websites and I saw exactly what you mentioned, which is niche informational blogs were getting absolutely destroyed, especially starting September 2023 with the helpful content updates. So I was like, okay, well, I guess I'll just look on AHREFS and see what wasn't affected. And I started noticing these directories. I didn't really, like, go into it thinking, I'm gonna Go build new a portfolio of directories. I was just like, okay, well this, I found this website that was getting over a hundred thousand monthly visitors and it was rank one page one for my target thrifting keyword. And I was like, I could do better than this. This is like pretty ugly. And I feel like not that helpful. There could be better information. It's also out of date. They're missing a lot of locations. And I was like, okay, I'm going to go and build it. And yeah, once I started ramping up and that kind of aha moment happened, I was like, okay, yeah, this meets all those five criteria and I can just keep building these out. That's what launched the directory side Hustle for me.
- [33:12]
Nick Loper
Again, that's Frey chu from episode 692. Highly recommend checking that one out if you've been impacted by the last couple years of SEO upheaval as a way to potentially fight back and start making money online again. And I love the five criteria he mentioned. Scalable, global, cheap to start, remote, friendly, high margins, sellable as an asset. That's a pretty solid framework for evaluating any business opportunity. In fact, the episodes featuring side hustles that check those boxes tend to perform pretty well. So maybe a directory will be my next side hustle. There are unfortunately more ideas than there are hours in the day, but don't sleep on websites as a recurring revenue opportunity. Traditional article based Q and A SEO tough right now, but certain types of websites are still getting traffic traction and revenue and that is recurring revenue side hustle number six. I've got more recurring revenue side hustles coming up right after this. I'm excited to partner with OpenPhone for this episode. OpenPhone is the number one business phone system that streamlines and scales your customer communication for both calls and texts all in one easy to use centralized hub. But before OpenPhone was sponsoring podcasts, they took a more guerrilla marketing approach. You probably don't remember this. This is, this is a while back.
- [34:25]
Liz Wilcox
But when we just started OpenPhone, one of the ways that we got our first customers is through Facebook groups. And I joined a bunch of Facebook groups, including yours.
- [34:35]
Nick Loper
Thank you for not kicking me out.
- [34:36]
Liz Wilcox
But I posted a couple of times.
- [34:38]
Nick Loper
And I actually remember seeing there were some of your listeners and folks in.
- [34:43]
Liz Wilcox
Your community interested in solving the problem we solve, which is not using your.
- [34:48]
Eric Dingler
Personal phone number for work.
- [34:49]
Liz Wilcox
And those posts got us some of our first customers. So thank you.
- [34:54]
Nick Loper
It's a full circle moment. Oh, that's super fun. Very cool. That's Darina the co founder of Openphone and sure enough, her posts are still there. Openphone is offering side hustle show listeners 20% off your first six months at openphone.com sidehustle that's O P E N P-H-O-N E openphone.com sidehustlez and if you have existing numbers with another service, Openphone will port them over at no extra charge. Years ago, this is probably 2009, I'm sitting in this conference in Santa Barbara and the presenter asks this question, are you working on your business or are you working in your business? I saw myself as this full time entrepreneur, but it was this moment of clarity that no, I was still very much working in the business day to day. So when I got back home, that's when I made my first full time hire. It was the first in a long series and an ongoing series of steps in trying to take control by being okay with of letting go of certain tasks. Now when you find yourself in that position of needing to hire like yesterday, you need our sponsor Indeed. Plus Indeed's sponsored jobs help you stand out and hire fast. There's no monthly subscriptions, no long term contracts, and you only pay for results. That's why for my next hire I'm using 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. Number seven is a side Hustle that probably doesn't get enough airtime and that's product licensing. This is where you can turn your ideas into recurring revenue and get paid every time a major company sells your product idea and you didn't even have to worry about manufacturing it. Stephen Key from Inventright has made a career out of renting his ideas to companies that already have the distribution and manufacturing and marketing power to bring them to market. Here's Stephen explaining why licensing can be faster and less risky than starting your own product company.
- [37:08]
Dustin Heiner
It doesn't require any capital, you don't.
- [37:10]
Nick Loper
Have to set up a company. And there's so many companies out there that need us creative people so they're looking for ideas. And every year there's just more and more opportunity for us to submit ideas to companies and let them pay us royalties for everyone they sell. So that's the basic business model is Saying, hey, I am the idea guy who we just had on the show, and I'm going to turn around and essentially sell that intellectual property to some company who can turn that into a product to make money off it. Absolutely. You're basically renting your idea to a company, okay? And they're going to pay you on everyone they sell.
- [37:45]
Dustin Heiner
So you don't have to start a company. You don't have to worry about manufacturing.
- [37:49]
Nick Loper
Or raising money or do any of those things. And what's really great about it, Nick, it's really speed to market today, Right.
- [37:56]
Dustin Heiner
If you start a company, raise capital.
- [37:57]
Nick Loper
All those type of things that you need to do to be successful, it takes a lot of time and effort. When you license an idea, you find that perfect partner that has relationships, distribution, money, they can put your product on a shelf. Extremely, extremely quick. Stephen went on to explain that 5% of gross sales is a pretty typical product licensing agreement, which may not seem like a lot, but if you think about the distribution and economies of scale that some of these larger brands have, it can really add up, especially for something with super low startup costs. I mean, you're basically taking something for free out of your brain and getting paid for it. And Steven had some great tips on how to approach companies with your ideas, how to find the decision makers. But one thing that was surprising to me is that a lot of companies already have a process for this. They're really open to crowdsourcing product ideas from people like you and me and paying us for them. For example, if you look up Hasbro submit ideas, you're going to find this structured program called Hasbro Spark that lays out how it all works, how to submit your proposal, and stuff like that. So be sure to check out that full episode with Steven for more on how it all works, which I will link up in the show notes. So product licensing is recurring revenue side hustle number seven. Number eight is web design and hosting. And before you say, well, I don't know how to host or design websites, let me offer a gentle reminder that everything is learnable. And after you hear the next clip, you might be more inclined to learn it. In episode 550, Ryan Golgoski discovered something really interesting. Instead of selling websites for thousands of dollars upfront, what if he charged a few hundred dollars per month for ongoing design, hosting and maintenance? This model makes websites a lot more accessible to small businesses while creating predictable monthly revenue. Here's Ryan explaining how he makes this value proposition work.
- [39:50]
Ryan Golgoski
If having a better website that is going to offer a Better user experience, it's going to better your SEO, there's going to be better conversion opt on the site. Even if it's just generating for you one extra sale a month. You know, that's extremely conservative way to look at it. It's, the service is already being paid for and then some. So it's, it's a pretty simple easy sell. Whereas like if I were to, you know, try to sell a website for five grand, a lot of people sell websites for even more than that, 10 grand. For a company that's, you know, not doing millions of dollars in sales, that's like a huge number to them and it's hard for them to justify but you know, 180, 220, 300 bucks a month and they're not only going to get more leads, they're also going to look a lot better. So there's going to be so much more perceived value to their marketplace. They're going to be perceived as the high end, luxury most professional service provider.
- [40:51]
Nick Loper
And you're doing several of these a week at this point. Sounds like volume wise.
- [40:55]
Ryan Golgoski
Yes. Yeah. So 20amonth, give or take, sometimes, sometimes less. But last year we did 211 new signups and this year shooting for 250.
- [41:10]
Nick Loper
Yeah, listeners can do the math on that and say, wow, that's pretty substantial operation. And now once it's in on the developer's desk, what's their typical turnaround time to get this thing up for approval or up for hosting?
- [41:25]
Ryan Golgoski
Yeah. So the initial stage of development, it should have about a week's time max. They could get it done quicker than that. Then it will go to the project manager. They'll be going back and forth with the client. If they need any revisions that will go back to the developer. And then if we're doing content, that will take a little bit of extra time for us. If they're doing content, it could be fast, it could take a year, who knows. But we, we shoot for about a four week time frame for the project from the time they sign up to the time their site goes live.
- [41:59]
Nick Loper
Okay. Okay. Just to give yourself some buffer room in case there's any back and forth. Okay, cool. And do you consider, you know, the upfront developer time and some of these other upfront costs, like is there a sense of the break even point? Well, after, after three months we're good. Or after six months like it's all gravy. And so if we can keep that person on for six months and keep them happy, like, I mean they yeah, they signed the contract but who knows. I just try to get figured out for like yeah, you're front some labor and some other expenses up front here.
- [42:30]
Ryan Golgoski
Yeah yeah. I mean it definitely starting out it is not as efficient or profitable but over time you'll really refine your systems and you should be able to at least your your fixed costs should be covered by about two months of of the customer's payments.
- [42:48]
Nick Loper
Fixed costs covered by two months of customer payments meaning the next 22 months are almost pure profit. Again that is episode 550 in your archives. Definitely one that I refer back to quite a bit and likely replicable in a ton of different niches. Remember Ryan was focusing on power washing companies as his primary client base. Now the key is that monthly support or that monthly payment includes ongoing value hosting, maintenance, updates and support. Our next recurring revenue example is what I'm calling subscription E commerce. Think Amazon, subscribe and save. Think subscription boxes, Think replenishable products in the direct to consumer space element comes to mind those little salt packets. Once you use them up you're probably going to order more dollar shave club for razors, supplements and vitamins. After all, it's easier to sell the same thing to the same customer again than it is to sell a brand new thing to a brand new customer. So we had a couple guys on the show last year or the year before and their product was a replenishable product in the skincare space called Pretty Boy skincare for men. Yoprittyboy.com I think was the site. But between the initial inventory and the marketing expenses, it can be a pretty capital intensive business. Ben Faze and his partner Kevin found success by focusing on one key metric making sure customer lifetime value exceeded the cost of acquiring that customer. Here's Ben from episode 581. Is there a metric you like to be at in terms of cost of.
- [44:19]
Ben Faze
Acquisition from a profitability and break even point? We want to be in the mid-20s because of our LTV which hovers in the 70 to $80 range and because of how frequent people transition to subscribers and then how long those subscribers stay for us. I mean Nick, I'm sure you're familiar with Andrew Ferriss.
- [44:35]
Nick Loper
I don't know that name.
- [44:36]
Ben Faze
Okay. He's a big E comm guy, does a podcast. He talks a lot to brands like ours at his podcast. We're his target audience. We listen to this podcast that we found so interesting which he's like, if you start to see that your repeat customer rate is basically exceeding your new customer rate. So if returning customer revenue is outpacing new customer revenue for sustained months, what that tells you is that you should be basically doing everything you can to throw a boatload of cash at getting new customers. So now that CAC metric for us hovers more in that like 35 to the low 40s range. Because we know, again with that LTV that that customer we are willing to bet heavily that if you buy our product once, you will at least buy one more. And we think a vast majority are going to subscribe. About 60% of our revenue on a given month comes from subscribers.
- [45:18]
Nick Loper
Okay, do you have the subscribe option.
- [45:21]
Ben Faze
Versus just okay, which again, meet the customer where they want to be.
- [45:26]
Nick Loper
Like Shopify will just let you do that, like make it a recurring purchase.
- [45:29]
Ben Faze
There's tons of apps on Shopify. It's one of the most user friendly platforms you can have. We use a service that specializes in subscriptions. And some of the things like why I was saying meet the customer in the middle that they do so well is our subscription model allows you to pick your frequency 30, 45 days or 60 days. You can sign up to manage everything via text. So you can skip an order, you can cancel at any time. We're not holding you to anything. You can pause your subscription for one, two or three months. Or we're going to make it as easy as possible for them to do business with us as long as they like the product and the brand.
- [45:56]
Nick Loper
Again, that's Ben faze from episode 581 from yopprettyboy.com on his recurring revenue side hustle in the skincare space under this category of subscription e commerce. Now, one thing to keep in mind is the timing of cash flows. It can look great on paper. Hey, a customer is worth $100 over their lifetime. We can buy ads, we can acquire those customers for $50. No brainer. Let's do it all day. Except Google and Meta want to get paid today or at least whenever your credit card comes due at the end of the month. And that $100 LTV might not hit your account for several months or a year or maybe more. But it definitely makes you think about what kind of replenishable products you buy on a regular basis. Coffee, toilet paper, protein powder, greens powder like Bloom or AG1 shampoo, deodorant. Lots of examples in those spaces. But maybe some side hustle opportunity as well to come in with some unique positioning and make a name for yourself. Even Mark Rober in his Crunch Labs build box would qualify, right? But I think there's a higher degree of difficulty because me, his team in that case is having to recreate the product every month, coming up with something new, something you don't have to do if it's just shipping out a new set of razors or another tube of skin cream. But subscription ecom is recurring revenue side hustle number nine, our final example takes a traditional high touch service and makes it surprisingly scalable. And that's coaching and masterminds. So coaching and masterminds typically require a lot of personal time and attention. And because of that, they're usually higher ticket like hundreds of dollars a month or more. But in episode 570, Stephen Faust found a clever way to scale personal mentoring using technology. So instead of traditional group calls, which he found he didn't love doing, he offers unlimited one on one mentoring through an asynchronous video platform. Here's how he makes it work. In the military career niche, what's better.
- [47:52]
Stephen Faust
Than just selling stuff one off is getting people to pay you every month. And I leaned into that and my membership includes a lot of the stuff. I sell one off, which is kind of maybe a faux pas in some ways. But my digital products that I sell are inside the membership, right? Because what I realize is not everybody wants a membership, right? Sometimes they want to buy stuff and sometimes they just want to get more help and support in a membership. So I have all of the things that I sell one off inside the membership, plus I have some additional things, some additional workshops. I'll usually add a new workshop once a month, a topic, a leadership topic. I also do, and this is maybe a little unorthodox, I stopped doing member calls because mainly I didn't like doing them. I didn't like having to be to show up. I'm more of a passive income guy, which doesn't really fit memberships, but that's kind of what I desired. So I stopped doing member calls because I didn't like them and people didn't really attend them that regularly. So what I do now is I do and I sell it this way. Included in the membership is unlimited one on one mentoring. Unlimited mentoring for $39 a month plus all the stuff that they get in there as well. So that's the stickiness of my membership is the once a month workshop and the unlimited one on one mentorship.
- [49:14]
Nick Loper
How do you deliver that exactly?
- [49:16]
Stephen Faust
Great question, great question. And I know you're familiar with this, I'm sure. Video ask.
- [49:20]
Nick Loper
I don't know. Video Ask.
- [49:22]
Stephen Faust
Okay, Video Ask. It's a great tool. It's kind of like a bonjoro on steroids or a bomb. Bomb on steroids. Okay, so videoask.com I use that. And what that does is it creates an asynchronous funnel that I have in my membership where it has a video of me giving an instruction going, hey, if you have any questions, you need help or support, if your boss won't help you, I'm here for you. I got all this experience. Let me help. Ask me anything you want. So they click a button, they can leave a video, they can leave an audio, or they can leave a text. They can choose their own adventure on how they want to communicate with me. They hit the button, it goes into the funnel. Video ask sends me a notification that says, hey, Susie, left you a message in this funnel, this mentoring funnel. That's for the. For my members. I go in on my phone and I click a button and then I will watch, listen, or read what she says. And I push. I. I've done this in traffic at a light, I've done it at the supermarket. I just push a button, says, hey, Susie, great question. Here's what I would do. Step one, two, three. If you have anything else, let me know. I click a button. It sends her the response. It literally takes a few seconds. It's very low friction for me because people don't overuse it and abuse it. If they did, I'd probably stop doing it.
- [50:37]
Nick Loper
Okay.
- [50:37]
Stephen Faust
But they don't. And it's really personal and confidential and it creates a lot of stickiness in the membership because they can get that support when their boss won't help them or they're just scared or they don't want to reveal their problems to people around them. And that's how I help them.
- [50:52]
Nick Loper
That's really interesting is on the surface, I would say unlimited one on one measuring sounds unscalable.
- [50:57]
Stephen Faust
That sounds unscalable.
- [50:58]
Nick Loper
It sounds way worse than a monthly group call. Like, okay, I just, I know when I have to show up. Like, I'm not. But, you know, as. But what you're saying is like high perceived value. Oh, I can ask a question anytime I want. But realistically, they're not pinging you at all hours of the day and night. That's times 200 members. Okay.
- [51:15]
Stephen Faust
I might get one or two a week. I don't get many at all. Yeah, I just don't get it because I think people see that as, oh, this is a pretty, pretty high value, important thing. I want to make sure I use it the right way.
- [51:26]
Nick Loper
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [51:27]
Stephen Faust
I believe is the case. And it's never been a problem. I have a hundred minute plan with Video Ask. I've never, It's 30 bucks a month. I've never run out of it. And I embedded into Kajabi into a lesson. It's a beautiful workflow and funnel that is so easy to deliver and fulfill.
- [51:43]
Nick Loper
Just one or two questions a week. High perceived value, definitely sustainable from Steven's standpoint. The biggest risk I see is in people canceling it who aren't using it for several months in a row. And maybe for Steven's audience the $39 isn't a big deal and they kind of want to keep it in their back pocket knowing they have access to them should the need arise. We talked about this recently, pricing your service as a utility where it's barely a blip on the credit card statement. Is it really worth canceling? I believe this is the entire business model of Planet Fitness, right? Like let's get a bunch of people in at a low price with the understanding that yeah, the majority of them aren't going to be heavy users but they keep paying because, well, they plan to start going more next month. Right. It sounds really similar in Steven's example and this was episode 570. I think it's a really interesting one and maybe one that you could layer on top of an existing product or service offering for some incremental revenue in your own business. So to recap, today we've been talking about 10 recurring revenue side hustles. The first was software and specifically white labeling, a software tool that already exists. Check out the episode with Chris Lellini for more on that. We talked about a local subscription service like the Pooper Scooper example. We talked about an online subscription service, recurring monthly local SEO was the example that we use there. Number four was real estate rental properties. Number five was a membership through the lens of Liz Wilcox's $9 email marketing membership. We talked about six was websites or directory websites as being somewhat AI resistant compared to these traditional article based or information based websites. Number seven was product licensing. Remember to check out Stephen Key from Inventrite for more that. Number eight was recurring web design and hosting through Ryan Golgoski's 180 sites was the example there. Really, really profitable, really interesting business. Number nine was subscription E commerce thinking about what kind of replenishable product that you might be able to create or even white label. And number 10 was that coaching and Mastermind example with Stephen Faust the common thread through all of those, though, is solving recurring problems. That's the way to build some predictability, that same predictability of a steady paycheck. Build that into your Side Hustle so you're not starting from scratch every month or dealing with that feast or famine cycle of freelance life. The key, I think, is picking a model that matches your skills, your interests, your available time. Chris Lelini's software approach requires different sales skills, different strengths than the local service business or than building directory websites. As per the usual, we've got a detailed text summary of this episode on the side Hustle Nation website, complete with links to all the full episodes mentioned so you can dive deeper into any of the models that caught your attention. All you gotta do is hit the Show Notes link in the episode description and it'll get you right over there. Now, certain side Hustles may resonate with you more than others, which is why I want to invite you to generate your own personalized side Hustle show playlist of some of our greatest hits episodes. How it works is you go to Hustle show, answer a few short multiple choice questions, you do it right from your phone and it'll build you a custom curated playlist based on your answers that you can add to your device, you can learn what works and you can go make some more money again. That is Hustle show for that personalized playlist. Big thanks to all our incredible guests who shared their insight for this episode. Big thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone. I want to invite you to hit up Sidehustlenation.com deals to take advantage of all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place. That is it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you're finding value in the show, do me a favor. Help spread the word. Fire off a text to a friend. Hey, I think you'll like 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 the.