How to Replace Your Salary by Buying Mini Businesses (Greatest Hits)

0:00Let's be real. Nobody starts a business for the joy of calculating tax withholdings. That's where our partner Gusto comes in to take the stress out of payroll, benefits, and HR, so you can focus on why you started your business in the first place. Gusto is online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses. It's all-in-one, remote-friendly, and incredibly easy to use. So that means you can pay, hire, onboard, and support your team from anywhere. I'm talking about automatic payroll tax filing, simple direct deposits, health benefits, commuter benefits, workers' comp, 401k, you name it.

0:34Gusto makes it simple and all with no hidden fees, no surprises. Plus, if you have any questions, their team of certified HR experts are standing by to help. It's no wonder why more than 400 ,000 small businesses already trust Gusto and why it's the number one rated payroll software for fall 2025, according to the review site G2. So try Gusto today at gusto.com slash side hustle and get three months free when you run your first payroll. That's three months of free payroll at gusto.com slash side hustle. One more time, gusto, G-U-S-T-O dot com slash side hustle. Here's an oldie but a goodie from the archives from the Side Hustle Show Greatest Hits Collection.

1:16This is the Financial Independence Fast Track. How to replace your salary by buying mini businesses.

1:27What's up, what's up, Nick Loper here. Welcome to this I'd Hustle show because when income from assets you control exceeds your monthly expenses, that's when you're free. That was one of the big eye-opening lessons for me as an impressionable youth reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and actually playing his cash flow board game as well. It's a call to build or buy income-producing assets and to keep your expenses low. And of course, there are lots of different paths to that ultimate goal of escaping the rat race, building your business, investing in real estate, even traditional stock market investing can get you there.

2:02But today on the show, I want to focus on a specific asset class that might have one of the fastest returns. I'm joined by Stacey Caprio from Her.CEO, who was desperate, in her words, to leave her day job. And she ended up doing just that after acquiring and improving a portfolio of many online businesses, websites that make money from advertising, in her case, that now earn a few thousand dollars a month. For her, that was enough to leave her job. Now, this asset class can be risky, and we'll get into some of Stacey's early mistakes, but if you have some online skills or management skills to bring people in if you don't want to run it yourself, this can be a fast track to the cash flow you need to fund your lifestyle, perhaps 10 to 15 times faster than if you were to rely solely on traditional investments in a standard 4 % withdrawal rate.

2:56That's exciting, but there's some risk that goes into it. So stick around to hear where Stacey finds these businesses to buy, her unique filtering criteria, and a few quick ways she's been able to accelerate the cashflow of her portfolio for even better returns. Notes and links from this episode, plus a free PDF highlight reel with all of Stacey's top tips from the call are at SideHustleNation.com slash Stacey. That's S-T-A-C-Y. I promise she delivers the goods in this episode. Stacey got the idea that buying websites could be her ticket to freedom reading sites like Side Hustle Nation and Niche Pursuits by Spencer Hawes, and she decided to jump in.

3:38Her first purchase didn't go as planned, though. She bought a site on Flippa.com, F-L-I-P-P-A for$1 ,300, expecting it to make, as the seller said it did,$350 a month, chipping away at those monthly expenses, right? Well, it turns out the seller was lying. Discouraged but not defeated, she was determined to learn from that experience and try again. I'll be back with my top takeaways from this call with Stacey after the interview. Ready? Let's do it. I was a little bit discouraged more with myself for not doing the due diligence. And I think every time you make a website purchase of this nature, you learn so much.

4:21I recommend really starting small, but letting each thing you learn just come with you and you'll be able to start making really good purchases after you've made a few smaller purchases. And once you know what to look for, you'll be able to build on that. But my second site was actually a mistake too. I didn't start making good decisions until my third site. So my second site, I had learned a lot. So I've only looked at sites with verified revenue again and verified analytics. So I wasn't going to let anyone scam me or lie to me about that part of the business. And I actually spent a lot more.

4:56I spent$10 ,000 on this site and I think it was making around$500 a month. so it was about a 20 times multiple and I knew everything was legit but I made the mistake of purchasing a fad site so it was based on an app I don't know if you've ever heard of the word whizzle answers app that was an app that was popular a few years ago but applications are only popular for about six months or so and then they just their traffic just dives down So I was actually able to double the revenue by switching to a different ad network that I knew had higher revenue for that niche. Started making$1 ,000 a month for like two or three months and I was really happy.

5:41Okay, you're like, hey, this is working out well. Yeah, I was like, hey, look at me. I learned quickly. But I guess not because it turned out that the site was based on an application whose popularity dived after I'd had the site six months. I think I ended up making back maybe$6 ,000 on the site. I really did end up losing about $4 ,000 or so on it. So I guess the next lesson I learned is not to buy the fad sites. Yeah. So we're kind of building this criteria through experience, revenue verified analytics around an evergreen topic. So you're not going to be subject to this fad spike in search traffic, and then it dies off.

6:20Anything else that you filter by or that you look for on Flippa? Yeah, I'll take you through the filter process I use when I'm looking for sites to buy. First, I filter by expired listings. So I'm viewing old sites that are listed for sale that never sold the first time. A lot of bidding drives prices up way past what you should be paying. And then I also filter by sites that make revenue through AdSense, since I know how to quickly increase revenue by AdSense, by switching networks, by testing ad placement, and then by doing some quick SEO optimizations, including quickly optimizing for site speed.

7:04Okay, okay. So saying, just like real estate, I'm going to take this fixer-upper and apply my skills and knowledge to it and make my money back a little bit faster. Exactly. And so once I find a site that has both of those filters and is making maybe$500 or above a month in AdSense, then I'll contact the owner through Flippa and I'll ask them to add me to the Google Analytics. Once they reply and add me to the analytics, I have some Google Analytics checks that I do to determine the site quality and just to determine that the site is actually what it says it is. first i'll just check that the verified page views and traffic numbers match the flippa numbers next i expand the google analytics to the beginning of the site's existence and then i look for huge traffic drops or warning signs and if there's anything that stands out i'll ask the owner about it sometimes there's a good explanation such as the host went down that day or they stopped buying paid traffic or they recovered from a penalty.

8:10And then I look at some basic demographic information, look at what country the traffic is from. And ideally you want it to be from the U.S. because advertisers pay the most per page view for that. English speaking countries are okay too, but if the traffic is all from India, you might want to do a double take because that usually, it's either not high quality traffic or advertisers aren't willing to pay as much. Then I usually just quickly check the language the traffic is speaking, which if it was mostly from the US, it's likely English. Google Analytics will tell you what language the visitors are speaking.

8:48Assuming the website is written in English, you'd think it would be English. Yeah, I've never had that be contradictory. It's a language in the country, but I always kind of check. Then I like to check the acquisition report to see where the traffic is from. And this is probably the most important check. So you want to make sure the majority of the traffic is organic. And if it's social, that's also okay. But you just have to make sure the social thing is included in the sale. And social traffic is a lot more variable. I actually made a bid on a Pinterest-based site once, but they wouldn't be my first choice, especially if the traffic is from Instagram or Facebook.

9:27The algorithms with those sites change so much, and they restrict traffic a lot, so I wouldn't recommend it. But if it's all paid traffic or paid social or paid anything, I would not recommend buying the site at all. Unless that's your bread and butter skill set is driving cheap paid clicks. It could be a tough nut to crack for somebody else's business. With the expired listings, that's an interesting strategy. Have you found that these site owners are more open to negotiation because they're like, hey, I listed it for seven days, 30 days, however long the original auction was and nobody bought it, but I still want to unload it.

10:09Yeah. I think that's a huge plus about searching for the expired listings because these were people that wanted to sell their site, but then they didn't find anyone who actually wanted to buy it. I think that's one reason I've been able to buy all the sites I've bought at 20 times valuation or less because the two successful sites that I ended up buying after my first two mistake sites where I bought the first one for a 20 times valuation and then I doubled the revenue right away so I made it back in 10 months and then the second one, I bought a 10 times valuation and I just made it back in 12 months, which was last month.

10:54Wow. That's a really quick return on investment, especially compared with traditional investing or even real estate investing. We're like, oh, I'm looking at a 14 % cash on cash. And that would be great right now. But after that first year, everything is gravy. So that's pretty cool. More with Stacey in just a moment, including the tactics she uses to quickly increase the revenue of the sites she buys right after this. Some days I feel like being a business owner is really like being a firefighter in chief, just in dealing with all the issues and responsibilities that come with the job. And one way to make life a little easier is to take advantage of our sponsor Gusto's payroll and HR services designed specifically for side hustlers and small business owners.

11:34Gusto takes the pain out of running a business. I'm talking about automatically calculating paychecks, filing payroll taxes, onboarding and benefits to take the best care of your team, whether they're 1099 or W2 workers. Plus, Gusto comes with on-demand access to HR experts. So if anything comes up, like those fires need putting out, you've got someone in your corner. And how about some safety in numbers? Gusto is trusted by over 300 ,000 small businesses, and 94 % of them would recommend it to a friend. And three out of four customers say it takes less than 10 minutes to run payroll, which means a lot more time to focus on the stuff you love.

12:09And here's the best part. As a Side Hustle Show listener, you get three months totally free. All you got to do is go to gusto.com slash side hustle. That's gusto, G-U-S-T-O dot com slash side hustle. You're going to love it. Head on over to gusto.com slash side hustle to claim that offer and get started today. Did you know there's a disease running rampant among side hustlers and new entrepreneurs? It's called superhero syndrome. Symptoms include a feeling like you got to do everything yourself, thinking you're the only one who can do it right and struggling to let go of certain tasks. Does that sound familiar to anyone?

12:43But the good news is there is a cure. Our sponsor Indeed can help you find the best candidates for the roles you need to fill and find them fast. Stop struggling to get your job posts seen on other job sites. Indeed's sponsored jobs help you stand out and hire fast. With sponsored jobs, your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates so you can reach the people you want faster. It's true. Sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed get 45 % more applications because every superhero needs an amazing sidekick. That's why for my next hire, I'm using Indeed. There's no need to wait any longer.

13:16Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. Side Hustle Show listeners get a$75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash Side Hustle Show. Just go to Indeed.com slash Side Hustle Show right now and support the show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash side hustle show. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring indeed is all you need. Are you niche agnostic when you're looking for these sites? Like here's a site about dog walking or here's a site about, well, maybe not the app development or that one specific app, but I'm curious outside of all this criteria, are there specific areas of content that you really like or that you won't touch?

13:59Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. I only touch things that I personally understand and can wrap my head around. I think that's really important. So I would never buy a site that gives people software to do something, for example, because I don't code software or personally understand that. I look at something and if I know how to do it and understand it, then I'll consider purchasing it. Even if it's an industry that most people would just say, oh, that's not interesting enough, or that's not something that I'm interested. I don't care if I'm interested in it. I just care if I understand it and can create content around it or just understand why people are coming there and understand the actual content.

14:48So that's important to me. Okay. Is there a sticker price on these sites? Like, hey, the asking price is $10 ,000 for this thing that's making 500 bucks a month. And you can open negotiations from there. I assume Flippa has a messaging system built in, or is it all more opaque? This is how much it's making. Make your offer. The site owner can put a buy now price on a listing. And if you think that the buy now price is worth it, and they can set that at whatever multiple they want. And if you think that price is worth it, then you can just click buy now, put your credit card in and start the purchase agreement.

15:27I've never actually done that. I do the expired listings and I message the person and then I kind of message them with an offer around 20 times and I make a note of telling them, hey, 20 times the monthly profit valuation is the going rate. Would you be interested in this offer? and then they usually will either do a counter or they'll say, yes, that sounds good to me. And then you can kind of negotiate or just kind of do it. And then they will set the buy now price to what you negotiated. And then you just click buy now and complete the purchase. If you go the normal route, then there will be a minimum price and then people will keep increasing bids until the auction ends.

16:17But you can also, even if you're in a live auction, you can always click buy now and pay the auctioneer's buy now price. So that's always an option if you really want a site. Okay. Okay. What does that transfer process look like after you say, okay, I'm going to make this deal. It checks all the boxes for me and I'm going to go for it? It's not too bad, but it's a little complex. So if you're the person buying the site, you'll start the transfer of your funds into escrow. You can choose how you want to pay. If you pay by credit card, there is around a few percent fee. If you buy a site that's$10 ,000 or more, you end up paying$300 ,000 or$400 ,000 in credit card escrow fees.

17:07So I wouldn't recommend that unless you really don't trust the process because you know credit cards are so forgiving and if there's a mistake they can issue you a refund and everything but I would recommend you can do I usually do the wire transfer option I bought a few of the smaller sites I did do the credit card option but yeah you can do wire transfer a credit card and there's no fee for the wire transfer once your money's in escrow the person will start the transfer to you basically they'll just transfer you the domain name and you'll likely have to pay for that if you use the same domain registrar that they use it's a simple process and you just click accept transfer the site files to you usually they'll just upload that in a zip file and I'm not a developer so I hire someone to take those zip files and put it into my host for me I like the host hot coast for big accounts the semi-dedicated vpn and then i also like a small orange for smaller accounts i mean neither are perfect but they're pretty good so then i just hire someone to put the files in the host and then you just configure the domain to be pointing to your host and then that's the whole process okay you ever had any hiccups during that process No, I haven't had any hiccups because I have a really good developer who moves it all over.

18:38Yeah, you don't want to risk traffic going down or messing up your rankings or anything like that. That's kind of critical to have a no downtime transfer. Yeah. So basically, they'll still have all the site data in their host, and the domain name will be pointing at their host, and then you point it to your host. But say you have an issue and you point it to your host and it doesn't work, you could hypothetically just point the domain back to their host and everything would still work because they have all the content and data set up in their host still so technically once you point it to your host it's yours and you own it but you might want to ask them to delete the files on their host because technically they still have the entire website and all the data they could even set up the exact same site with a different domain name so you'd want to make sure they don't do that.

19:32Okay. Okay. And then for the, for the money part of it, the AdSense part of it, is that as simple as installing a different code snippet? How does that work to get that from his AdSense account or her AdSense account to yours? It's very simple. All you have to do is switch out the, every person has a unique AdSense publisher ID number, and you can keep their exact ads and just switch out your publisher ID number code. Or if you want, you can just create an entire new ad code from your account and then put it in the same places that they've put it. Or you can put it in more places or different places as well.

20:14And that's kind of your strategy. That's kind of your game is saying, how can I optimize the ad revenue? How can I monetize a little bit better than the previous owner to improve the cash flow and make my money back a little bit quicker. There are a few just quick things I do to kind of double the revenue in a very short amount of time. I'll check the site speed using tools.pingdom.com. Site speed is a very big ranking factor, especially on mobile. So when you speed up a site right away, your mobile rankings can really shoot up, which is great. A lot of the times, if it's a really slow loading site, I'll put it on Cloudflare, which is a free CDN, which is a content delivery network.

21:02It has a large computer network around the world and it serves your sites from different locations. So we're closest to where the user is viewing your site. So it really speeds it up. So often I'll do that if the site has a speed issue. And then I'll also take a look at images and maybe use an image compression plugin, which you can get on WordPress to kind of decrease image size and speed up the site. But that's actually smaller compared to which ad network you're using. If you're using the AdSense ad network, I would recommend testing a few different ad networks. I like Monumetric and I also like AdThrive.

21:44And then I have some relationships with ad providers. You should try testing one or two different ad networks for about two to three weeks and see if they make more than AdSense. And that can be a huge just initial boost. As you're shopping these sites, you're like, oh, baby, it's super slow. Or look at these images. They're not even compressed. I know I can do better than that. Is that something that's going through your head? early in the process, or does that just come into play after the transfer is complete? So site speed, big images, I don't really look at until after, although I suppose you could look at it before.

22:21I do look at the ads. So say they have tons of ads on their page and it's super spammy, I would more of stay away from that because I can't really increase the ad revenue through ad placement there. But I mean, I'd still look at it. Changing ad networks has a bigger effect, I think, than simply improving site speed. Unless the site is incredibly slow, then you could do a lot with site speed. Like if it's taking more than 10 seconds to load or so, then site speed's going to give you a lot of leverage. But yeah, ad network is huge and then ad placement is huge. So those are the two things when I'm looking to say, oh yes, I know how to improve you right away.

23:01Fair enough. And we should point out there are tons of resources on how to do that on Authority Hacker, Nitrosuits, a bunch of sites in that vein. You ever played around with Ezoic for optimization? Yeah, I do like Ezoic. It's great to test which ad placements are good for your site. I used it a little bit in the beginning, but now I kind of know the best ad placements and just use my experience. But I think it's great, especially for people who have never tested ad placement before. So I would definitely recommend it. More with Stacey in just a moment, including how she manages this growing portfolio of sites and her plans for the future right after this.

23:43A lot of side hustlers suffer from what if-itis. What if it doesn't work? What if I don't have the skills? What if I pick the wrong path? But one thing 100 % of our amazing guests have in common is they took their shot. They phased down those what ifs and they got their answers through taking action. Our partner Shopify helps turn what ifs into why nots. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world, from household names to the very guests on this show. What if I can't design a website? Shopify's got you with ready-made templates to match your brand style. What if people haven't heard about my brand?

24:17Shopify helps you find customers with easy-to-run email and social media campaigns. And what if I get stuck? You can tap in to Shopify's award-winning 24-7 customer support. Let's turn those dreams into and give them the best shot at success with Shopify. Sign up for your$1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash side hustle. Go to shopify.com slash side hustle. Shopify.com slash side hustle.

24:48As a business owner, you worked hard to make that phone ring, but missing a business call? It's like watching money fly right out the window. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled Q-U-O. It's the smarter way to run your business communications. Quo is the number one business phone system built for 2025, not 1995. In fact, it's rated the top choice for customer satisfaction with over 3 ,000 reviews on G2. Quo works right from an app on your phone or computer, and it means your team can share one number and collaborate on calls and texts, just like a shared inbox. And here is what is really cool, because if you can't answer the phone, Quo's AI agent can.

25:30It can qualify leads, it can route calls to the right person, and it's going to make sure no customer is ever left hanging. Think of it like having 24-7 support without the 24-7 payroll. More than 90 ,000 businesses are already running on Quo, from solo operators to growing teams. Try it free when you go to quo.com slash side hustle. That's q u o.com slash side hustle. You can even keep your existing number quo, no missed calls, no missed customers. So it sounds like you had some background in online marketing and the rest of being self taught. Any other skills you think were critical to this business that you brought to the table?

26:11I think that anyone could probably learn how to do this. You don't necessarily need the background in online marketing that I have, although I think it definitely helped. I think that my SEO skills are actually a huge part of my success here, especially for sites, not just in the first few weeks doubling the revenue, but really long-term being able to do keyword research. It's huge knowing how to write engaging content for the site and just doing that consistently, I think are two skills that if you have SEO skills, you're in a really good position to help your site grow long term. Yeah, absolutely.

26:55Any recommendations for places to learn that stuff? Or is that something you learned on the job or just trial and error? Interestingly, I actually learned it all online through reading blogs and things because my job was specifically running paid ads and paid traffic. My favorite all-time SEO resource is Brian Dean of Backlinko. If you read all his content and listen to all his YouTube videos, I think you're in a really good place for SEO. Famously, he only has like 35 posts or something, but each one is a book. So you'll definitely learn a lot by reading Brian's stuff. You touched on another point, and that was the content creation side of it.

27:39So now this is yours. A website is a living, breathing thing, and it rarely is 100 % passive. You're going to add content to it. Are you doing that writing yourself? Are you farming out to ghostwriters or freelance writers? How does that piece of the pie work for you these days? Yeah, a lot of people will outsource all of their writing and all of their content, but I've actually found that when you outsource it, the content really decreases in quality and it becomes a lot less engaging. And interestingly enough, those are both ranking factors that Google uses. Google puts a lot of emphasis on time on site, number of page views and how engaged people are.