641: Starting Over? Podcasting, Newsletters, Competing in a “No Click” World, and more (10 Questions with Nick)

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1:17What's up, what's up, Nick Lover here. Welcome to the Side Hustle Show because making extra money never goes out of style. We're diving into the listener mailbag this week to answer your burning side hustle questions, starting with Gary, who asks, starting over, how would you grow an audience today? Is it too late to start a podcast? And how long did it take to start making money from the show? Well, Gary, starting over, I still think podcasting is a viable path to building an audience. And it's a really valuable one. There is something to the consistency and convenience and depth of relationship with it for as a listener, I get used to hearing the same voices week after week.

1:52And I can do it while I'm driving, while I'm walking to pick up the kids while I'm working out. There's a certain level of intimacy to that. And while there are certainly more podcasts, greater competition, and truthfully, better competition, level of production, all that jazz, than there was 10, 11 years ago, the world is only as saturated as you make it. I remember Jonathan Mendonca on the show from Choose FI years ago, he said, look, if you can't be first, be different, right? So they weren't the first personal finance podcast, but they were the first, you know, personal finance podcast focused on the fire movement.

2:23So you can't, you probably can't be first anymore, but you can still be different. This is from episode 436 with John Lee Dumas. Is there such thing as being too niche? I've seen some successful podcasts. We had a guest on recently who had a laundromat podcast, like how to run a laundromat business. And he was like, it's done surprisingly well. And I said, well, why do you say surprisingly? And he's like, because it's a laundromat podcast. But I'm curious, have you seen anything where it's like, I don't know if that's a big enough market to try and serve? It is impossible. And I mean, impossible to be too niche.

2:55People always go the other way because they're scared. They're fearful. They have their own self doubts and they think, I just need to be able to serve everybody. I want to resonate with everybody. I want to just create a podcast that just inspires other people to inspire other people to inspire other people. And that fails because that is a weak, pale imitation of other successful podcasts that are out there that are actually doing something specific. And that's why people lose. Why people win is because they say, I'm going to create the best solution to a real problem. I flippin' love that laundromat podcast idea because guess what?

3:28He is the best laundromat podcast in the world. He's also the worst. He's the only. And that's why you win in this world because you become the best. However that is, if that takes you being the only to be the best, that's giving you a chance to win because people will beat a path to your doorstep if you're number one. If you're number two, if you're number 10, if you're number 200, you will lose. Yeah, where can you be the only? That was a line that stood out to me from the book. It was like, hey, when you started EO Fire, I was the best daily interview podcast for entrepreneurs. I was the worst daily interview podcast for entrepreneurs.

4:03I was the only. And that's an interesting place to play. And you might be thinking, well, shoot, that's easy for John to say. He started in 2012. But I would start with getting really clear on what niche I'm going to serve, who my ideal listener is going to be and what's the best way to speak to them? What kind of content are they really going to value? Early on, I set out to create the show that I wanted to hear. Look, realistic ways to make money. Ideas you can start in your spare time, light on the theory, heavy on the tactics. Now, marketing wise, it's still the game and whether this is a podcast or whether whatever thing you're building, it's still a game of getting in front of your ideal listeners, readers, viewers, customers, clients, right?

4:42Where they already are. Maybe it's on Instagram, Maybe it's on other podcasts. Maybe it's on LinkedIn. Maybe it's on YouTube because of the friction involved specific to podcasting. I mean, I got to I got to go find my podcast app. I got to find your show. I got to find the specific episode you're talking about. And then I got to find the time to listen to it. It is a really challenging medium to grow, but super, super worthwhile and rewarding to do it. One of the accidental growth tactics that worked for me was becoming known as the side hustle guy in the personal finance space. And I got to give credit to Philip Paylor, the founder of FinCon, for pulling me into that world where everybody was talking about investing and saving money and paying off debt.

5:23And initially I was like, I don't know, I'm talking about entrepreneurship. I'm not in the personal finance world. And it took a while to see that, well, earning extra money is a natural extension of that more traditional personal finance content, which led me to guesting on a lot of those types of podcasts and growing listenership for the Side Hustle Show. So the question could be, well, what other shows have an audience that would be receptive to your message? And how can you be of service to those hosts? And if you're going to focus on video first, you've got much better search and discoverability on YouTube than you do on most podcast apps.

5:58Plus you have the added benefit of YouTube as this recommendation engine, where if people like your content, the algorithm is likely to show it to other people that it thinks will like it as well. So I'm always trying to step up our video game while staying true to the remote recording lifestyle. I talked to some people at FinCon, I go, no, I almost exclusively record in studio, in person in New York. And it's like, I just like staying at home. I mean, that's great for you. But you know, that's just the logistics involved. It's, that's not for me. Now, within the first year, you asked about the monetization side of things, I started selling a private mastermind group through the podcast and through the modest 700 person email list at that time.

6:38It was the huge, huge price tag of a hundred bucks a month for three months. But when those first applications started to come in, it was a really exciting validation that this could be a thing that people were willing to pay to connect with me and with their fellow side hustlers. I don't think I would have gotten any applications had it not been for the relationship formed with those early listeners through the podcast. And as far as sponsorships, the show started to attract more serious sponsorship dollars around year three and has continued to see pretty strong demand ever since, with some sponsors sticking around for years in some cases, which is really rewarding to see.

7:16Now, I've got to turn down more sponsorship requests than we can accept because it's either not a great fit for the audience or it's not a brand I've used or could see myself using. But Gary, thanks for that question. That's a little bit of a brain dump on how I would think about growing a podcast starting over today. Question two came from Kathy, who says, I don't have any online presence yet, but I'm wondering, would it be worthwhile to start a blog or YouTube channel? For example, personal finance and lifestyle, but targeting the Australian audience because everything is pretty much written for U.S.

7:48readers. I'm pretty good with words. I just don't know where to start. Overwhelmed with information. I'm 50 years old trying to restart my career. Well, Kathy, I love this question. Personal finance and lifestyle for an Australian audience is probably a bit too broad. Even personal finance for Australian women is probably a little bit broad, but it could work. So even better might be helping Australian women over 50 prepare for retirement in the sense of personal finance and lifestyle. Like that could check the personal finance and lifestyle components to really set people up for a fulfilling retirement or a second act.

8:20Now building traffic to a blog is more challenging than ever, but that doesn't mean you should neglect having a website. I still think it's really important to have that as a home base. But similar to the first question, my efforts on building content and connecting with other people would be on other channels to start out, right? Maybe that's YouTube, maybe that's LinkedIn or X or Threads or Instagram. And since you enjoy writing, there are lots of content first or written first content channels that are less follower based than ever and more algorithm based, which is helpful for new people starting out.

8:52It's not that you don't need to have 100 ,000 subscribers. If you have a small but engaged following early on, it means your work can get seen by a lot more people than just those who follow you if it resonates and it starts to get picked up by the algorithm. So I would probably pick one platform, let's say LinkedIn, and really focus my efforts there, learn the best practices, start to build a following and start to have those one-on-one conversations with those followers on their biggest pain points and struggles. Those are going to guide future content, but also what kind of products or services that you eventually create to serve them.

9:26This is question three. Brittany says she's started a free email newsletter for artists in Southern California. And in three months, I've grown it to 4 ,500 subscribers with a 65 % open rate. My current obstacle, I want to start monetizing the newsletter. My problem is I have no idea what a reasonable price is to charge sponsors or even how to approach potential sponsors. So first off, Brittany, incredible work. That's some really positive early traction. 4 ,500 subscribers in three months. It took me probably over a year like to get that many. So really cool work. And I really like the local niche angle here.

9:58So newsletter ads typically sold on a CPM basis is a cost per thousand impressions, occasionally on a cost per click basis. And that's some platforms will help to do that. But really, the rates can really vary depending on your niche. So you've got a newsletter targeting, you know, exclusively hedge fund managers or, you know, Fortune 500 C-suite executives. You probably are going to command higher rates than one targeting broke college students, just as one example. You could even begin with experimenting by including affiliate links to products that you like. And here's how Ryan Stedden described his advertising options for Naptown Scoop.

10:34This is his local newsletter focused on Annapolis, Maryland. And this clip is from episode 615 of the Side Hustle Show. I'm curious how you have it priced today. I think you mentioned we have five different ad slots per day, I guess, probably based on placement and visibility and structure of those ads. Yeah. So three different kinds. The bottom kind has three each day. So top one has your logo at the top, a picture up to 150 words. It's the first ad, unless we have a headline story. It's the first thing in the newsletter. So probably about 60 % of the time, it's the top thing anybody sees. Then in the middle, we call it a feature ad, and that has 100 words, a photo, and that's right in the middle.

11:14And then right near our live music section at the bottom, which is our most popular thing, we have three ads we call baseline, which are text only, 70 words, and headline, and a link. And everybody, all these can be linked. It's funny now at the beginning, those ads I sold that web design guy were headline ads or what a very early version of those. And it was$500 for six of them. Now an individual headline ad, if anybody wants to buy one is$812.50. And it goes down with volume. If you're going to buy 12, then that unit cost goes down. If you're going to buy 24, that unit cost goes down. If you're going to go buy 48, be crazy and spread those over the next two years so that the unit costs will go down.

11:55Or we have two advertisers that do do that every single week. They just pay a lot of money. But the prices are very, very different from when we first started. Everything is really just pulling out of thin air. I just, how much does this cost? $500 for six ads. Everything was just thrown out. Is there a rule of thumb for X price based on every thousand subscribers or something like that? I heard a rumor back in the day that Morning Brew was charging$70 per thousand. And so I kind of roughly based it on that. And it's actually still kind of around there, our top ad. It's like very loosely based on that.

12:28Or I don't think it's loosely based on that anymore. Maybe it's just worked out that way that it's still on there. Once it started stabilizing, I used to change prices every week because we would be adding hundreds of subscribers every week. And I'll be like, I just sold an ad to you for 200 bucks for 800 subscribers and had a really good run of Facebook ads. And now we have 1600 and I'm not going to charge$200 again. So I would change it every single week. Then I started changing it, I think like every month. And then it was every couple of months. And now I just change it every year. And it's not on any kind of, oh, we have this many more subscribers.

12:58It should be this much more. Now I just basically up it on inventory. If we sell out, then it's like we sell out really easily. I know it's too low. If it's harder, but we still sell out, I'm like, okay, we could do a little bump. If we're not selling at all, thankfully this hasn't happened yet, then maybe we stay the same or even worse, go lower. Now it's not really based on any kind of formula. It's just based on feel of, oh, last year we sold all these way too easily. Okay, we'll double the price. and then we sold them all out again, but it took longer. I was like, okay, cool. That's probably a good number.

13:29Well, that was two years ago. We doubled it. Last year, we just went up by, I think it was 20%. This year, probably just go up by 10 % and maybe stabilize somewhere around there and just upgrade the prices every year by eight to 10%. Is it most common to sell like a multi-month package? Like, you're going to be featured eight times over the next three months. Like, is that how it's typically structured? I like to sell long packages. We have people who sign on to be on there every other week for two years. We have people who are on there every other week for one year. We have some people who are just pretty seasonal, but they're on for the same six months and they'll sign two-year deals for those six months.

14:04I just like that because it's easier. And also, it ups your average client value. I can't say too much about this, but there's a website that I want to buy right now because I think I can do a lot better. I think that it's a great opportunity. and their average, they have way, way more visibility than I do, way more impressions, way more uniques. But their average customer value is like one fifth of mine, which is why I think I can buy it and do really well with it. But I'm just always trying to increase that. We have a dentist client right now who's on just once a month and our standard is really twice a month.

14:39So they're on once a month, but they've been killing it. They've been doing really well with it. So rather than trying to go sell a new client, it's way easier to just sell someone who's already selling with you and increase that customer value. Increase their frequency. Yeah. I went to them and said, Hey, do you guys, it's been working out pretty well once a month, I'm going to juice it and you'll get a better unit rate and you'll be in there more and you've already made your money back. And then a lot, because I know you told me how many clients you got and I'm kind of guessing what your average customer value is worth based on industry comparisons.

15:08And I think I'm probably pretty close. And so it's just way easier to make those sales than to go out and cold call a new person and get a new one. So I'm always trying to increase customer value. And one way to do that is just raise prices every year. And nobody has ever canceled because of the increase. And for Ryan, he also mentioned including a little sponsor this newsletter link at the bottom of every edition, something that would be pretty easy to add if you don't have that in there already. And then aside from that, a lot of community outbound sales to try and drive long-term partnerships.

15:40The other thing that he mentioned that might be worth considering is offering what he called category exclusivity. Like we can only accept one real estate agent at a time and we would love for that to be you. Again, episode 615 in your archives, all about growing and monetizing a local newsletter. Really cool episode. I'm going to be back with more Q &A on marketing, monetization, and the death of the click right after this. are you still overpaying for wireless it's time to say yes to saying no at our partner mint mobile their favorite word is no no contracts no monthly bills no overages no hidden fees no bs and here's why i said yes to making the switch over five years ago and yes to getting premium wireless for 15 bucks a month i really liked being able to keep my existing phone and my existing phone number when i switched over this year we've taken advantage of their easy international add-ons including free service in Canada and affordable packages when we were visiting Japan.

16:35But closer to home, all Mint Mobile plans come with high-speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. And the best part? Plans start at just$15 per month. Are you ready to say yes to saying no? Join me in making the switch at mintmobile.com slash sidehustle. That's mintmobile.com slash sidehustle. Upfront payment of$45 required, equivalent to$15 per month, Limited time new customer offer for first three months only. Speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes on unlimited plan. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. One of the tools I personally see make a huge difference for business owners is Quo, formerly OpenPhone.

17:17It's the same great business phone system you've heard me talk about before, just with a new name. When you're running a business, you know that every missed call is a missed opportunity. So Quo, formerly OpenPhone, This is the number one business phone system that streamlines your customer communications. It works through an app on your phone or your computer. So no more using your personal number as your business line. No more carrying two phones around. With Quo, your team can share one phone number and collaborate on customer calls and texts, just like a shared inbox. So anybody can jump in to keep response times fast.

17:47And this is where it gets super cool. You can set up Quo's built-in AI agent in just a few minutes to handle calls after hours, answer customer questions and capture leads on autopilot. I want to invite you to get started for free. Plus side hustle show listeners get 20 % off your first six months at quo.com slash side hustle. That's q u o.com slash side hustle. Look at them getting that three letter domain q u o.com slash side hustle. And if you've got existing numbers with another service quo will port them over and no extra charge. Whoa, no missed calls, no missed customers. Question four is from Dustin who asked, hey, I'm looking at starting a consulting business.

18:31I want to register a domain so I can have a professional email. What's the best place to do that? I might make a very simple website in the future, but no time soon. Basically looking for a good email service and something that I can utilize maybe with Gmail or on my phone. Well, Dustin, I think this is a pretty small investment for that little bump up in perceived value. So you're on the right track here. So to better explain what Dustin is talking about, it would be like having an email address like Dustin at smartconsultinggroup.com as opposed to smartconsultinggroup at gmail.com. It makes you look more legit, especially if you're targeting a customer base who would notice that sort of thing.

19:07And for more, you know, quote unquote, blue collar operations, I probably wouldn't let that be a barrier to you getting started like nicksguttercleaning at gmail.com would probably work just fine over nick at nicksguttercleaning.com. Now I still prefer the second one, but my customers probably don't care. They just want their gutters clean, right? So the first step here would be to register the domain. You can get that through any domain registrar, GoDaddy. Pork bun is the one I've been using lately. No affiliation there. It's just, you know, I like the service and you can get email service either as an add-on to that domain registration.

19:40Or if you, like you said, you eventually want to build out that website, some hosts are going to include it in their hosting package. You can get a free domain with hosting registration at Bluehost. We've got an affiliate link for that. But if you don't want to build that website yet, you can just register the domain. You can add on email. I think Pork Bun charges something like 24 bucks a year for that. Now, the caution is, if you email me from Dustin at smartconsultinggroup.com, I'm likely to go to smartconsultinggroup.com just to check out your website. So even building out that simple placeholder brochure style website could be beneficial.

20:15But of course, my online behavior might not be like your target customers. And then I think there's, you can probably do like six bucks a month for Google business suite to have, you know, that domain or that email inside of the familiar Gmail interface. Now, I just set up my site hustle nation email to forward to my personal Gmail inbox early on, and I've actually never change that. So that's another option as well. Question five was from Patricia who asked, is there anywhere on your site that covers ideas that disabled people or people with mobility restrictions can do? So Patricia, at the moment, there is not, though it is on our keyword list of future content to create.

20:53And actually, what I kind of want to do is the every side hustle ever, like Airtable database where you can filter by the time required, the earnings potential, whether it's online, whether it's in person, I think that would be a fun project to try and build out. But like, again, another one that's kind of daunting to get off the ground. But in the meantime, just think about any remote or online side hustle, I think can be done by somebody with mobility restrictions. And we do have several resources on those on the site that I can link up in the show notes, just follow the show notes link in the episode description, it'll get you right over there.

21:26So ideas might include virtual freelancing, virtual consulting, anything you can do over the internet, virtual assistant service, content creation business, digital products, print-on-demand, proofreading, freelance writing, paid market research, lots of options there. Now, one famous example in the blogging world or in the online business world is John Morrow. He runs a site called smartblogger.com, paralyzed from the neck down from birth with spinal muscular atrophy, and still went on to build a super successful online business, earning$15 million dollars, according to a recent LinkedIn post of his.

22:01He uses speech dictation, like speech to text, dragon dictation, I think. He's got a special computer mouse that he operates with his lips. Really inspiring guy. Instead of focusing on the things he can't do, he focused on what he could do. And he's helped a lot of people in the process. Smartblogger.com is his site and really inspired by what John has created and the impact that he's had. Question six came in from Ruth, who asked, I'm struggling to launch my small sewing classes for kids. I run them out of my home. I've advertised on Peach Jar and my local Facebook pages. Does anyone have any suggestions for me?

22:36Well, Ruth, this sounds like a really cool, cute side hustle. And to market it, I think you're on the right track with local Facebook pages and maybe even local parenting pages, school groups, or homeschool groups. We just did a local workshops episode, Chloe Winstanley. It's episode 634. She was hosting jewelry making workshops. Definitely worth a listen if you missed that one. And her business was a little bit different because she's targeting adults and she would go to a community center venue, not trying to run those out of her home. But she mentioned having success marketing on Facebook and how one ticket sale, in her case, often led to three or four ticket sales because people would want to come with their friends.

23:17So maybe testing with a limited ad budget might be worthwhile. Now, a few other people in the Side Hustle Nation Facebook group mentioned targeting homeschool parents, which I think is a really good fit, and also a tight-knit community where you might start to see some word-of-mouth benefit. Now, to go a little bit broader, this reminds me a little of the after-school programs episode we did a few years ago, where my guest May got approved by her local school district to host these after-school arts and crafts enrichment sessions. That is episode 289 in your archives. A little, you know, a long way to scroll to get down to that one, but definitely worth a listen if you're into that sort of thing.