Many freelancers in Side Hustle Nation eventually grow their business into an agency that no longer ties their time to their income. What that looks like in practice is often bringing in other team members to deliver the work.
The business ideas and case studies featured in these archives are generally a little “bigger” than a traditional freelance business, even if the actual work offered is the same.
What separates a service business from a freelance business is a matter of scale. No longer are your hours directly tied to your income, and you may not even be directly responsible for doing the work; that’s what your team is for.
Cassandre went from $0 in side income on May 18th to a total of $2230 by July 30th.
While $2230 isn’t a remarkable amount of money, it’s helped her pay down a significant amount of student debt in a very short amount of time, starting with zero money invested and zero experience.
This is her story.
A couple weekends ago I finally got around to creating a website for a new side hustle of mine; non-fiction book editing.
Now I should mention that this is something I’ve been quietly doing on the side for the last year or so without a website, landing clients via word of mouth and even a few through Fiverr.
When your service business is just starting out, you absolutely don’t need a website. In fact, it can be one big giant distraction from your primary goal of winning paying clients.
Dayne Shuda runs GhostBlogWriters.com, a done-for-you blogging service that commands premium prices, and oversees a team of 20 part-time writers to deliver the work for clients around the country.
But like most businesses, Ghost Blog Writers came from some pretty humble beginnings. In fact, Dayne started it as a side hustle with $0 upfront investment.
One of the biggest “side hustle trends” of the last few years is tapping into the growing “sharing economy” or peer-to-peer businesses. We’ve seen some fun examples related to platforms like Airbnb and Uber, and I believe tapping into these existing marketplaces can be a really fast way to begin earning job-free income. A few … Read more
Here’s a guy who built an online business, and had the courage to up and move to Cozumel, Mexico — with his wife and 3 young daughters.
It’s not your typical single-23-year-old-dude digital nomad type of story, though Sean’s business itself is simple enough to be replicated.
This is a fun chat about hustling for business and building a lifestyle on your own terms. I think you’re going to like it, even if you have no desire to move abroad.
So there I was in my entry-level job earning barely enough to cover car, gas, home, and all the necessary stuff, yet my friends were out 3 nights a week without me.
Frustrating.
My income just wasn’t good enough for my lifestyle.
I started coaching youth soccer, pulling from my playing experience (not coaching) from college, and I was getting a side-stream of income.
It’s been quite a while since our last discussion of a software business here on the show. Even though we touched briefly on Long Tail Pro with Spencer Haws, I really have to go all the way back to Josh Isaak in episode 12 to find an in-depth breakdown of a Software as a service business.
So that means today’s conversation with Garrett Moon from CoSchedule is long overdue! After all, the low incremental cost and recurring revenue potential of the SaaS model is such a trendy holy grail of business right now.
In Episode 42 of The Side Hustle Show, Alex Harris (aka AlexDesigns) joins me to talk niche service businesses.
He shares how he built his business, AlexDesigns.com, in his spare time, how he landed his first customers, how he scores big name clients, how he prices his services, and how he’s recovering from a Google algorithm update.
In Episode 39 of The Side Hustle Show, I’m joined by Mike Newton from HackingPhotography.com.
We discuss how to make a name for yourself in any business, how to score corporate clients (and why you’d want to), and how to generate passive income streams from a service business.
In episode 34 of The Side Hustle Show, fellow side hustler Ryan Cote from WPAmplify.com discusses how he’s built his part-time service business into a high-value recurring-revenue machine.
We talk scoring customers, pricing, delivering the goods, retention, and much more.