There have been a few requests for a Progress Report update, so wanted to take some time this week to give a behind-the-scenes look at the last year or so of the business of Side Hustle Nation.
Inside you’ll learn more about:
what I’ve been working on / through
some of my biggest challenges, wins, and projects
what’s been on my reading list
Ready? Let’s do it!
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Business Coaching
The biggest new thing is late last year I joined a business coaching program called 2x.
It’s run by Austin Netzley, who I’ve known for over 10 years. What really sealed the deal for me was having 3 different friends (all Side Hustle Show guests!) all go through 2x and see really strong results.
Side Hustle Nation was over 10 years old at that point, and I reasoned it was time to get some outside perspective on how to best take it to the next level.
My biggest fear was, “Am I even coachable?” We’re combating a decade of bad habits here!
And even though life and business were pretty great, there’s always this nagging grass-is-always-greener feeling of what could be. Is there a way to make more and work less, build better systems, and make the business less reliant on me? And on a more existential level, is that something I’d even want?
Up to that point, I’d had very little in the way of formal coaching. I worked with a podcast coach for a while a few years ago, which was helpful, I had a speaker coach leading up to my TEDx talk which was helpful, but not much outside of that.
But I’d like to think of myself as having humility enough to admit I don’t have all the answers.
Structure-wise, 2x is a combination of one on one coaching, group sessions, and in-person masterminds. What I learned about myself is it’s gotta be one-on-one or in-person — I had a really hard time prioritizing any of the group stuff.
The in-person events were really cool, almost a forced pause to get me out of normal day-to-day operations and think at a higher level.
As far as results, the business is up compared to last year, but how much of that is a direct result of 2x is hard to say. Still, I feel like I have:
a more strategic outlook on the whole operation
a clearer picture on the work I truly love and enjoy
built some better systems for my team and have attempted to get better at letting go of certain responsibilities
Austin has been generous enough to offer Side Hustle Show listeners a free copy of his book, From 6 to 7 Figures: The Proven Playbook To Get More Traction, Free Up 20 Hours Per Week, And Scale Past $1M In Revenue!
This is best for people who’ve already got a business running, but maybe you’re running into bottlenecks or you’ve hit a growth plateau and are looking for a playbook to unlock the next stage of the business.
Podcast Updates
Here’s what’s new with The Side Hustle Show.
Joining a New Podcast Network
Toward the end of 2023, I joined a new ad sales network, YAP Media. As you’ve probably heard, they’ve done a great job selling sponsorships on the show — far better than I ever did on my own.
That transition involved switching from our long-time media host, Libsyn, over to Megaphone, which supports dynamic ad insertion across the whole catalog.
I was definitely late to make this move, but here’s another example of that underrated entrepreneurial skill of looking around. What are the other top shows doing? They’re doing this, and they’ve been doing it for a while. Get with the times, Loper!
Releasing More Episodes
Last fall, an iOS update cut download numbers for a ton of podcasters. In talking with other long-time hosts, it sounds like this was pretty much across the board, where all of a sudden you’re getting half to 2/3rds the downloads you were previously getting.
So while there’s some sense of safety in numbers, and even if the reports today are a more accurate picture of what’s happening, it was still a blow to the ego!
One way we’re combating that is creating more audio content, going from one episode every week to 1.5 (every other Monday has a shorter-format episode).
Paid Listener Acquisition
I went a long time without spending any money to promote The Side Hustle Show. That has changed in a big way.
This year I’ve spent probably over $20k trying to grow the listenership by advertising on various podcast platforms like:
Castbox
Overcast
Podbean
Player FM
and others
And those do deliver some measurable download and listener growth, but it’s still a bit of a question mark in terms of how profitable that ad spend is, or if it is even profitable at all.
What I do know is this: listener growth is a really consistent lead domino; as downloads grow, so do many other downstream metrics like email subscribers, sponsorship sales, and other revenue.
Side Hustle Nation Website Updates
Here’s what’s been going on with the website side of the business.
Mediavine Display Ads
The other big shift that happened just before joining 2x was adding Mediavine display ads to the Side Hustle Nation website for the first time.
Like you, I think display ads on the Internet are pretty annoying. I’ve been using an adblocking browser for years, and was always hesitant to clutter up the site with them. That said, 10 years into the business, I come out of my cave for a minute and noticed that all my friends and peers in the personal finance / side hustle space are running display ads on their content.
So I said, “Let’s give it a test — it doesn’t have to be permanent. Let’s just turn them on and see what happens.”
Here’s what happened: no noticeable drop in site traffic, email sign-ups, or affiliate conversions — or whatever drop there was was more than offset by the incremental revenue.
Flipping this one switch pays the mortgage and then some every month, to the extent I probably should have done it years earlier as much as that pains me to admit.
And then what we were able to do just recently was figure out how to turn off the ads for Side Hustle Nation email subscribers, so if you’re already a subscriber and click a link from one of our emails, it should be an ad-free experience for you. (At least on that first page… I don’t know if it’ll remember that setting through your whole session.)
Creating New Content
I’ve definitely struggled to create new content this year. We’ve probably only added around 25 new posts.
This was a realization of mine in the last month or so: we’ve made a focus and investment in maintaining the existing library of content, but with that, there’s only so much potential search traffic we can capture.
Even if we do everything right, there’s only so much search volume surrounding those keywords, and some of that is being eroded by AI snippets, ad results in the SERPs, a million Reddit posts, and more. So while it’s important to keep the archives up to date and relevant, if we want to increase traffic, we’re going to have to get more serious about adding new content to expand the “surface area” of search potential.
Hiring an Official Side Hustle Nation App Tester
I’m trying to hire a dedicated app tester/reviewer who can put a bunch of side hustle apps and websites to the test and share their honest feedback.
Technical SEO
I hired a couple pros on Upwork to:
update/modernize the schema across the site and the articles
improve the site speed and load times
These were relatively small investments, almost to rule them out as an excuse for Google not ranking our content.
Lasso Product Displays
We’ve been creating a lot more product displays and call outs using the Lasso plugin this year. It’s easy to use, they look nice on the site, and it really only takes a few incremental conversions to pay for itself and then some.
Paid Traffic
I’ve been running a small scale paid traffic campaign for a few years, but was inspired by our recent episode with Alex Goldberg to try and ramp that channel up a bit.
I don’t have the most sophisticated tracking system in place but I’ve added a few new campaigns over the last few months, and have been trying to find a freelance expert with paid media arbitrage experience to help scale this.
The challenge I run into is being somewhat limited or throttled by the bid targets. There are certain prices per click where it makes sense to buy traffic, and there are certain prices per click where that would be super unprofitable, and Google’s default suggestion is to increase the bid.
I’d love to get to point where we could be profitably spending $10k a month or more. For the sake of reference, I think last month was less than $1000 in spend.
Alex’s argument is that this is consistent, predictable, high converting traffic that doesn’t rely on the ebbs and flows of social media or Google’s next SEO algorithm update.
Get Gigs
In June, I launched a new course to help side hustlers and service entrepreneurs connect with more customers and grow their business.
It’s called Get Gigs: 11 Proven Ways to Get More Customers and Make More Money in Your Service Business.
This was a lot of fun to create because it let me pull in my absolute favorite client-getting tactics from over 600 episodes of The Side Hustle Show.
Like I’ve done in previous years, I timed the launch to coincide with the annual BC Stack bundle sale. That way I could offer a great intro deal for subscribers: Get lifetime access to my new course for half price, PLUS 50+ other digital products.
When the dust settled at the end of the week, it was a $10k launch.
Looking to land more clients for your service business? Use promo code PODCAST for a special deal on the course.
YouTube Updates
Another bright spot from the last few months has been YouTube, where my efforts in planting little money seeds has been slowly starting to pay off.
I think of these videos as these evergreen mini digital assets, that can earn traffic and revenue with a really long shelf life.
Usually these are based off existing Side Hustle Nation blog articles, so it’s not creating content completely from scratch. And for a lot of the newer ones, I’m barely on camera at all — some not at all.
We’re using a really cool new AI-powered video tool called Pictory to create these. How it works is you upload your script and it pulls together dozens of stock video clips to create a pretty visually compelling video — the kind of work that would take hours to do manually it does in just a couple minute.
It even has some AI voiceover capabilities if you don’t want to do you own voiceover. For most of my newer videos I’ve been recording my own voiceover, uploading to Pictory, and then it syncs the visuals to what I’m saying. Pretty slick.
(Use discount code nshn20 to save 20% on Pictory!)
Here’s an example of a Pictory-assisted video that’s doing well so far:
We’ve been using Pictory for almost every non-podcast video we upload, and while they’re not necessarily going viral, some are earning thousands of views and making money from YouTube ads every single day. Overall, the channel is making almost double what it was earning at the start of the year.
And that income doesn’t include any affiliate earnings, email signups, or podcast listeners the video content might result in as well.
But there are a couple bottlenecks that stand in the way of really scaling up production here:
Scripting
Voiceovers
We’ve played around a little bit with ElevenLabs voice cloning, and it’s actually pretty good, but for whatever reason the AI-voiced videos haven’t performed as well.
For the scripts, I’m playing around with a series of ChatGPT prompts to try and convert existing website articles into compelling video scripts. It’s still a work in progress.
Still, I’m excited about building out the video library and continuing to stack up those evergreen assets. Lately the channel’s been earning around $25-30 per day, and it would be really exciting to get that to $100/day or beyond.
Tool Swaps
This year I’ve switched from:
ActiveCampaign to ConvertKit for email marketing
Bench to Kick for bookkeeeping
Zapier to Make for automations
What I Didn’t Get Done
I definitely feel like I’ve made some positive strides this year, but that doesn’t mean my to-do list is all checked off!
For example, I didn’t:
Do really any marketing or audience-building on social media
Create a membership program for the Side Hustle Nation audience
Redesign the website or homepage (last major refresh was in 2017!)
Publish the children’s book I wrote last year
Update my Side Hustle book (last updated in 2019!)
My constant challenge as an entrepreneur: remembering “it’ll be there tomorrow.”
Core Habits
These are the core habits I’m working on:
Walking at least a mile a day
Completing The 3 Question Journal nightly
Hot yoga 2x/week (in addition to other exercise)
Best Books of the Year
Astoria: Astor and Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire: A Tale of Ambition and Survival on the Early American Frontier
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
Living with a SEAL: 31 Days Training with the Toughest Man on the Planet
Alas, Babylon
The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom
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