Online Business

Ever thought about turning your video game obsession into actual income?

Gloria Riley from YellowLlamaCo.com creates and sells custom digital planners and templates for fans of The Sims computer game.

She’s built a full-time income by helping “serious simmers” organize their gameplay, track their virtual families, and stay connected to their digital worlds.

What if you could build a six-figure business in under 2 years — with zero technical skills and almost no marketing budget?

Tanya van Gastel did exactly that with Multiverse.ai, an AI-powered headshot generator that turned selfies into professional photos. She started with just $9 per sale, scaled to $29, drove over $350,000 in revenue, and sold the business — all while working with two co-founders and learning marketing from scratch.

In this episode, Tanya pulls back the curtain on how she found customers, grew through SEO and affiliates, pivoted to corporate clients, and ultimately prepared the business for acquisition.

Can you really get paid for Amazon reviews?

The short answer is yes. The longer answer is it depends on your writing skills, social media influence, and even what you consider as “getting paid.”

And that’s the topic of this post.

You know I love a good rental side hustle with recurring revenue and strong ROI.

But in this example, there’s no equipment to buy, no delivery logistics to deal with, and no tenants trashing in your place, which leads to some really strong margins.

John Michael from TownRankSEO.com started this journey just this past February. He is a longtime Side Hustle Show listener who recently started building and renting out simple local websites.

What if you could build a website that earns thousands per month in relatively hands-off income while traditional SEO struggles?

That’s exactly what Frey Chu has done with his directory-style websites. While article-based content sites have been getting hammered by Google updates, directory content has remained resistant to these changes and continues to generate that elusive semi-passive income online.

Let’s look at 10 popular passive income ideas to see which ones might actually make sense for you.

To help me do it is Mr. Smart Passive Income himself, Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income.

Nobody had a bigger influence on the creation and early years of Side Hustle Nation than Pat. It’s always fun to have him back on the show, especially with his new book coming out this week: Lean Learning: How to Achieve More by Learning Less.

We went idea by idea and gave each one a score from 1 to 10.

Some of them surprised us, and a few may have outlived their usefulness.

Cody Berman is no stranger to selling digital products.

He’s known in the side hustle world as the “printable guy” and co-founder of Gold City Ventures, but when Internet skeptics told him the Etsy market was “too saturated now” compared to when he started in 2018, Cody accepted the challenge.

And proved them wrong.

From zero to $1,000/month in 116 days with a brand-new Etsy shop, with no followers, no email list, and no marketing. Just skill and data-driven decisions.

(If you want to shortcut the learning curve, check out his course: sidehustlenation.com/etsyprintableslaunch)

Changing the world with chess and making $100,000 per year on the side.

That’s the story of today’s guest, Jeff DiOrio from EliteChess.net.

Jeff went from working in summer camp chess programs teaching kids how to play chess, to running his own summer camps and earning five times as much.

Can you really make money as an Amazon product tester?

If you love testing new products and sharing your opinion, it could be a great side hustle for you. 

But beware of companies offering to pay you to test and review products — it’s likely a scam.

Back in the day, you needed someone technical (or paid someone technical) if you wanted to build any kind of software.

Today, with the popularity of AI tools, not so much.

Pete McPherson from doyouevenblog.com is earning $100k by using AI tools to help build a series of small-ish web apps, usually built to solve a very specific problem for a very specific customer.

And he’s here to share with you how he built all of this… without being a developer himself.