To make money online, you generally need 3 things:
There will always be exceptions to this rule, like the YouTube celebrities who don’t have their own site, but most of the successful entrepreneurs online (myself included) have figured out those 3 things.
An online business is a great asset; you can work from anywhere and serve people worldwide. Depending on how you have it set up, you can even earn money while you sleep. Ahh that elusive “passive income!”
The location-independent business models you’ll find here include blogging, podcasting, self-publishing, teaching online courses, and more.
If you’re not sure where to start, let me recommend this “Greatest Hits” collection:
An automated business can help you make the 4-Hour Workweek a reality.
And while most businesses can be automated to a certain extent, some models are more ripe for automation than others.
In this post, I’ll break down Side Hustle Nation’s top automated business ideas
How do podcasts make money?
Producing a show takes real work, and if you want to keep your show running, you’ve got to find a way to make it work for you too.
The truth is most shows don’t make any money at all — and it took years before my podcast, The Side Hustle Show, could reasonably be considered a business on its own.
In this post, I’ll walk through my complete podcast production process for The Side Hustle Show.
If you’re not familiar with the show, it’s a top-rated and award winning business podcast with more than 8 million lifetime downloads.
I’ve been producing the podcast weekly since 2013, and though I know this process will continue to evolve, here’s what it looks like today.
Why should your first online business be a directory? This is one of the most overlooked yet potentially lucrative side hustles out there.
I’ve got a little bit of experience in this space (I actually built a virtual assistant directory years before), so this is something close to me.
But John Rush is a master at quickly building and marketing these little side projects.
He has launched 30 directories in just the past year, managed to monetize 10 of them, and even sold one (AllGPTs.co) for a sweet five-figure exit.
Would you believe there’s a marketplace of millions of buyers eager for digital products for teachers — and it’s not Etsy?
Rob is a high school math and personal finance teacher at fieducator.com. He’s built an impressive side hustle selling lesson plans and resources online at fieducator.store.
Through the popular platform Teachers Pay Teachers, Rob has turned his passion for financial education into a growing business that regularly brings in $2,000 a month — and it’s been growing 40% a year.
More than 150,000 women have completed Tiffany “The Budgnetista” Aliche’s Live Richer Challenge. The roughly 30-day challenge participants step-by-step instructions on how to get their financial lives in order, get out of debt, and start saving money.
Collectively, Tiffany’s tribe has saved $17 million and paid off $1.5 in debt!
This year, The Budgnetista expects to bring in more than $500,000 from speaking, book sales, sponsors and affiliate relationships, and a new private membership academy.
It’s always inspiring to reconnect with longtime friends of The Side Hustle Show, and Debbie Gartner aka the Flooring Girl is one of them.
Over the last few years, she’s turned her love for simple, creative projects into a $4,000-per-month digital product business on Etsy. What started as a personal outlet has grown into a scalable side hustle.
How can you drive traffic to your website without relying on Google?
The last 12 months haven’t been easy for content creators, especially those hit by Google updates. Some people saw a massive drop in traffic — up to 90-95%!
So is online publishing done for? Is the niche site era over? Not quite.
For those who adapt, new opportunities arise.
Jon Dykstra from Fatstacks Blog was among those affected but has since turned his attention to other strategies — and here are some of his strategies you can adapt.
Can you really get paid to answer questions?
That’s exactly what Debbie Gartner from TheFlooringGirl.com does – and her answers are earning her $20,000 a month.
I’m always looking for ways to work smarter and more efficiently, and to that end I took a recent inventory of my online business “toolkit.”
Of course many of these will be obvious to you but hopefully you discover some helpful new resources as well.
The good news? Most are free or at least have a free version!
And if you’re looking for the definitive guide to online resources named by top entrepreneurs, check out the full collection in my book, Work Smarter.
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