Nick Loper

Nick Loper is a side hustle expert who loves helping people earn more money and start businesses they care about. He hosts the award-winning Side Hustle Show, where he's interviewed over 500 successful entrepreneurs, and is the bestselling author of Buy Buttons, The Side Hustle, and $1,000 100 Ways. His work has been featured in The New York Times, Entrepreneur, Forbes, TIME, Newsweek, Business Insider, MSN, Yahoo Finance, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, Hubspot, Ahrefs, Shopify, Investopedia, VICE, Vox, Mashable, ChooseFI, The Penny Hoarder, GoBankingRates, and more.

121: An Engineer’s Approach to Building a $1500 per Month Side Hustle

August 25, 2023July 2, 2015

Tim Johnson is a man of many hustles. In fact, when he applied for my Inner Circle Mastermind last year, I had a hard time keeping them all straight.

Between his day job as a product engineer, his awesome self-publishing business, his Amazon FBA activities, and an upcoming brick-and-mortar project — and twin 2 year old boys — there’s no doubt he’s keeping busy!

On this call, we focus on his book business, which has earned a consistent $1000-1500 a month in author royalties.

Permafree on Amazon: How and Why to Give Your Book Away, Plus My Results

December 4, 2020June 29, 2015

In January, I had a chance to sit down with Nick Stephenson, a top-selling Kindle author in both fiction and nonfiction. We recorded a podcast session on building an email list from Amazon.

The “hook” was Nick built a massive list of 15,000 email subscribers in just a few short months, using one pillar strategy: giving his books away for free.

The first was with his fiction work, a crime thriller series where he decided to make the first title in the series “permafree.” Later, he pulled the same trick in non-fiction with a giveaway (very meta) called Reader Magnets.

How a Part-Time Blogger Earns $4k a Month

August 28, 2023June 22, 2015

Which is why I was nervous about publishing this post. Would my readers be confused or turned off by this sort of content?

To my surprise and delight, my first-ever income report was well received. Even readers who have zero interest in the business of blogging liked the post.

They enjoyed the opportunity to look “behind the curtain” and appreciated my transparency.

117: The Fastest Path to Side Hustle Cash Flow?

January 21, 2025June 18, 2015

One podcast I’ve been following for a really long time is the Empire Flippers show with Justin Cooke and Joe Magnotti. It’s been fun to watch their evolution from building tiny Adsense sites, running an outsourcing company in the Philippines, selling WordPress themes, and now really focusing in on their website brokerage business.

Consider this: it’s MUCH easier to buy an existing cash flow than to create one entirely from scratch.

In this episode we get into the business model of investing in sites, where to look for these “digital real estate” opportunities, some pitfalls to avoid, and even some creative financing options.

My First Amazon FBA Clearance Arbitrage Shopping Trips – And My First Sales!

December 3, 2020June 15, 2015

Over the past few weeks I’ve made several clearance arbitrage scouting trips. After hearing about this side hustle for the past year and some of the success my friends and peers are having with it, I had to give it a shot!

The first thing I did was install the Amazon Seller app on my phone.

Upon opening it, I learned an Amazon Seller account was required to run it, so I created a free Amazon Seller account.

116: Getting Started in Ecommerce

November 6, 2021June 11, 2015

Travis Marziani is the co-founder of BDancewear.com, an ecommerce store specializing in dance-clothing handmade in the US.

On this week’s show, Travis joins me to talk about why ecommerce is such an awesome business model, especially for side hustlers, and the story behind the dance site — since he is clearly not the target demographic.

He’s got some innovative content marketing ideas for online stores as well as how people can get started in ecommerce without massive overhead or investment.

The Piggyback Principle: The “Lazy” Way to Build a Successful Side Hustle

April 23, 2025June 8, 2015

The Piggyback Principle is a business idea framework that looks at popular market trends or “ecosystems” and seeks ways to support or supplement those trends.

It can be a faster way to start a business because you can capitalize on what’s already hot with an additional or complementary product or service.

Basically, your side hustle can ride piggyback on a larger business or trend.

115: Monetize What You Know: Proven Course Creation Best Practices

November 6, 2021June 4, 2015

Ankur Nagpal is the founder of Fedora, an online course-hosting platform with more than 4000 instructors. From his unique vantage-point, he’s got some insight into what separates top-selling courses from the rest of the pack.

Ankur gives some innovative ideas on how to use free distribution platforms like YouTube and even Udemy to build an interested audience and drive them to your premium course. We get into how to come up with your course topic, the tools to create your course quickly, and some pricing strategies as well.

Do 5-Star Work

August 25, 2023May 26, 2015

Ever since The Lean Startup hit the scene (and probably even before that), there’s been a widespread push in the entrepreneurial community to “just ship it.”

Get your product or service out there, and refine it later based on customer feedback.

But that’s not a license to put out crap.

113: Earning $3000-$4000 per Month on Kindle in Just 6 Months as a “Professional” Author, with Lise Cartwright

April 29, 2024May 21, 2015

Last year, Lise “came out of nowhere” as they say, and published 13 books in 6 months, and now earns between $3000 and $4000 a month in author royalties.

Of course the truth is she didn’t come out of nowhere at all; she came out of New Zealand and had already built a successful freelance writing business. However, the hustle of delivering work for clients all day had her seeking a more time-leveraged use of her skills.

Since she already knew how to write well and write quickly, she figured book publishing was a natural next step.

Usually Hustling, Occasionally Social