The Side Hustle Show
Nick Loper of Side Hustle Nation
- 52 minutes 22 seconds734: From Zero to 35M Downloads
In this week’s episode, I sit down with the Niche Pursuits Podcast to discuss what it takes to build a successful podcast from the ground up. As the host of The Side Hustle Show since 2013, I have over 700 episodes under my belt and a staggering 35 million lifetime downloads.
We dig into how I got started, what’s been the key to growth, how I think about listener engagement, and the practical steps to moving someone from a first-time listener to a raving fan. Whether you're just launching a podcast or trying to grow an existing one, I'm sharing detailed advice drawn from years of experience.
Full Show Notes: From Zero to 35M Downloads
New to the Show? Get your personalized money-making playlist here!
Sponsors:
- Indeed – Start hiring NOW with a $75 sponsored job credit to upgrade your job post!
- Quo (formerly OpenPhone) — Get 20% off of your first 6 months!
- Shopify — Sign up for a $1 per month trial!
- Gusto — Get 3 months free of the leading payroll, benefits, and HR provider for modern small businesses!
- Whatnot — Whatnot will match your first $150 sold in the first month!
About The Side Hustle Show
This is the entrepreneurship podcast you can actually apply!
The award-winning small business show covers the best side hustles and side hustle ideas. We share how to start a business and make money online and offline, including online business, side gigs, freelancing, marketing, sales funnels, investing, and much more.
Join 100,000+ listeners and get legit business ideas and passive income strategies straight to your earbuds. No BS, just actionable tips on how to start and grow your side hustle.
Hosted by Nick Loper of Side Hustle Nation.
20 April 2026, 9:00 am - 1 hour 3 minutesRank and Rent: $1000 a Month From Simple Local Websites
What if you could rent out digital real estate just as you would traditional real estate, but without all the headaches that come with maintaining a property?
That’s exactly what Luke Van Der Veer is doing with his digital “Rank and Rent” business.
What Luke does is he builds a local service business website, then “rents” it out to a local, less digital-savvy business that is more than happy for the extra leads.
Luke has been doing this for several years but said it took about 6 months to replace his day job income, and 12 months to hit 6-figures.
Today he runs a portfolio of over 100 different websites using this “rank and rent” model, earning predictable recurring revenue taking up just a few hours pre week.
Tune in to episode 448 of The Side Hustle Show interview to learn:
- how Luke picks a niche and evaluates the competition
- how to price your service
- how to find qualified “tenants” for your digital properties
Full Show Notes: Rank and Rent: $1000 a Month From Simple Local Websites
New to the Show? Get your personalized money-making playlist here!
Sponsors:
- Indeed – Start hiring NOW with a $75 sponsored job credit to upgrade your job post!
- Quo (formerly OpenPhone) — Get 20% off of your first 6 months!
- Shopify — Sign up for a $1 per month trial!
- Gusto — Get 3 months free of the leading payroll, benefits, and HR provider for modern small businesses!
- Whatnot — Whatnot will match your first $150 sold in the first month!
About The Side Hustle Show
This is the entrepreneurship podcast you can actually apply!
The award-winning small business show covers the best side hustles and side hustle ideas. We share how to start a business and make money online and offline, including online business, side gigs, freelancing, marketing, sales funnels, investing, and much more.
Join 100,000+ listeners and get legit business ideas and passive income strategies straight to your earbuds. No BS, just actionable tips on how to start and grow your side hustle.
Hosted by Nick Loper of Side Hustle Nation.
16 April 2026, 9:00 am - 49 minutes 20 seconds733: $25k/Mo From a Vibe Coded App, $10k/Mo Selling “Fake” Watches, and More
What can a crossing guard, a car negotiator, and a mindfulness bracelet teach you about building a side hustle? Quite a bit, it turns out.
This week, I sat down with Jason VanDevere to talk about some of the most unique side hustle ideas out there right now.
Jason is the creator of the Goal Crazy and Goal Crazy Planners, author of Dream Driven: The Step-by-Step Process to Discover Your Perfect Business Idea and Launch it This Year, and a longtime real estate investor.
He's a serial side hustler who brings a sharp eye for opportunity, and this episode is packed with them.
Tune in to Episode 733 of the Side Hustle Show to learn:
- how a former car salesman turned negotiation into a $200k/month business
- why a crossing guard's handwritten mailer now earns $14,000 a month
- two overlooked business ideas with low startup costs and real potential
Full Show Notes: $25k/Mo From a Vibe Coded App, $10k/Mo Selling “Fake” Watches, and More
New to the Show? Get your personalized money-making playlist here!
Sponsors:
- Indeed – Start hiring NOW with a $75 sponsored job credit to upgrade your job post!
- Quo (formerly OpenPhone) — Get 20% off of your first 6 months!
- Shopify — Sign up for a $1 per month trial!
- Gusto — Get 3 months free of the leading payroll, benefits, and HR provider for modern small businesses!
About The Side Hustle Show
This is the entrepreneurship podcast you can actually apply!
The award-winning small business show covers the best side hustles and side hustle ideas. We share how to start a business and make money online and offline, including online business, side gigs, freelancing, marketing, sales funnels, investing, and much more.
Join 100,000+ listeners and get legit business ideas and passive income strategies straight to your earbuds. No BS, just actionable tips on how to start and grow your side hustle.
Hosted by Nick Loper of Side Hustle Nation.
9 April 2026, 9:00 am - 39 minutes 32 seconds732: 24 Years of Side Hustle Advice
What does 24 years of hard-won entrepreneurial lessons look like in one place?
Here are the biggest ideas from over a decade of building side hustles, interviewing hundreds of entrepreneurs, and learning what actually works.
This is a collection of honest, practical principles — some learned through success, some through failure — that can help you start smarter, grow faster, and keep going when things get hard.
Tune in to Episode 732 of the Side Hustle Show to learn:
- how to find your real motivation and why it matters more than the idea itself
- the mindset shifts that separate side hustlers who succeed from those who stall
- practical frameworks for getting started, marketing your business, and knowing when to quit
Full Show Notes: 24 Years of Side Hustle Advice
New to the Show? Get your personalized money-making playlist here!
Sponsors:
- Indeed – Start hiring NOW with a $75 sponsored job credit to upgrade your job post!
- Quo (formerly OpenPhone) — Get 20% off of your first 6 months!
- Shopify — Sign up for a $1 per month trial!
- Gusto — Get 3 months free of the leading payroll, benefits, and HR provider for modern small businesses!
About The Side Hustle Show
This is the entrepreneurship podcast you can actually apply!
The award-winning small business show covers the best side hustles and side hustle ideas. We share how to start a business and make money online and offline, including online business, side gigs, freelancing, marketing, sales funnels, investing, and much more.
Join 100,000+ listeners and get legit business ideas and passive income strategies straight to your earbuds. No BS, just actionable tips on how to start and grow your side hustle.
Hosted by Nick Loper of Side Hustle Nation.
6 April 2026, 9:00 am - 53 minutes 22 seconds731: Unlocking Big Profits from Liquidation and Government Auctions
What if you could turn a single dollar into $5,000 in under a month? That's exactly what happened to Mindy, a member of Shannon Jean's reselling mastermind community.
She bought two pallets of books from a government auction for $1 total, discovered they were packed with medical and curriculum books selling for $200 to $400 each, and turned that dollar into $5,000 within about a month. And she's still selling the books today.
Deals like that are hiding in plain sight — on government auction sites and retail liquidation platforms that most people have never heard of. Shannon Jean has been buying and flipping product this way for decades, and in this episode he walks through exactly how it works.
Shannon is a serial entrepreneur, bestselling author, and creator of the $5 Reseller Mastermind, a community that has grown to more than 3,000 members over the past year.
His motto: "Buy with math, sell with emotion." You can find him at ShannonJean.com.
Tune in to Episode 731 of the Side Hustle Show to learn:
- where to find government and retail liquidation auctions and how to get registered
- why your selling system matters more than finding great deals
- how to research before you bid so you never buy blind
(Get the auction starter guide at shannonjean.com/auction)
Full Show Notes: Unlocking Big Profits from Liquidation and Government Auctions
New to the Show? Get your personalized money-making playlist here!
Sponsors:
- Indeed – Start hiring NOW with a $75 sponsored job credit to upgrade your job post!
- Quo (formerly OpenPhone) — Get 20% off of your first 6 months!
- Shopify — Sign up for a $1 per month trial!
- Gusto — Get 3 months free of the leading payroll, benefits, and HR provider for modern small businesses!
About The Side Hustle Show
This is the entrepreneurship podcast you can actually apply!
The award-winning small business show covers the best side hustles and side hustle ideas. We share how to start a business and make money online and offline, including online business, side gigs, freelancing, marketing, sales funnels, investing, and much more.
Join 100,000+ listeners and get legit business ideas and passive income strategies straight to your earbuds. No BS, just actionable tips on how to start and grow your side hustle.
Hosted by Nick Loper of Side Hustle Nation.
2 April 2026, 9:00 am - 41 minutes 32 seconds730: $1,000 a Month with Passive Digital Products
A guest early on in the Side Hustle Show said this: "Why am I more excited to make $5 passively than I am to make $5,000 actively?"
And whether or not that is true in your case, it is a line that stuck with me because that $5 can scale. The $5,000 usually can’t.
Chelsea Shelton is a former elementary school teacher, a mom of three, and a digital products coach at Gold City Ventures, the same program co-founded by Cody Berman, who previously shared how he built a $1,000/month Etsy shop from scratch in Episode 665.
She took the Gold City Ventures course during maternity leave, decided to stay home, and threw herself into selling digital products on Etsy.
Within 3 months, she hit 1,000 sales. Today, her shop brings in $1,000 to $1,200 a month largely on autopilot, and she spends much of her time coaching other sellers through the same process.
(Learn how to start your own Etsy digital products business with Gold City Ventures.)
Tune in to Episode 730 of the Side Hustle Show to learn:
- how to find products people are already searching for before you ever open Canva
- what listing best practices drive clicks and sales on Etsy
- how Chelsea earns passive income across multiple platforms with the same products
Full Show Notes: $1,000 a Month with Passive Digital Products
New to the Show? Get your personalized money-making playlist here!
Sponsors:
- Indeed – Start hiring NOW with a $75 sponsored job credit to upgrade your job post!
- Quo (formerly OpenPhone) — Get 20% off of your first 6 months!
- Shopify — Sign up for a $1 per month trial!
- Gusto — Get 3 months free of the leading payroll, benefits, and HR provider for modern small businesses!
About The Side Hustle Show
This is the entrepreneurship podcast you can actually apply!
The award-winning small business show covers the best side hustles and side hustle ideas. We share how to start a business and make money online and offline, including online business, side gigs, freelancing, marketing, sales funnels, investing, and much more.
Join 100,000+ listeners and get legit business ideas and passive income strategies straight to your earbuds. No BS, just actionable tips on how to start and grow your side hustle.
Hosted by Nick Loper of Side Hustle Nation.
26 March 2026, 9:00 am - 1 hour 12 secondsEtsy Printables: $10,000 a Month Selling Digital Products on Etsy (Greatest Hits)
Creating assets you can sell over and over again — that’s the passive income dream, right?
This is exactly what Rachel Jones has done by creating and selling downloadable printables on Etsy.
This year she’s averaging over $10,000 a month in sales, all while balancing a full-time job and two young kids.
Rachel started in 2018, and took her Etsy business full-time in 2021.
Note: I call this the Buy Buttons strategy. To kickstart your business, find the marketplaces your target customers are already shopping. Go where the cash is already flowing!
Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to learn:
- how to find profitable niches to sell digital products in on Etsy
- some of the categories Rachel likes
- the tools and technology she uses to get it all done
Here's a free guide to the best-selling digital products month-by-month to get your creative juices flowing.
Full Show Notes: Etsy Printables: $10,000 a Month Selling Digital Products on Etsy
New to the Show? Get your personalized money-making playlist here!
Sponsors:
- Indeed – Start hiring NOW with a $75 sponsored job credit to upgrade your job post!
- Quo (formerly OpenPhone) — Get 20% off of your first 6 months!
- Shopify — Sign up for a $1 per month trial!
- Gusto — Get 3 months free of the leading payroll, benefits, and HR provider for modern small businesses!
About The Side Hustle Show
This is the entrepreneurship podcast you can actually apply!
The award-winning small business show covers the best side hustles and side hustle ideas. We share how to start a business and make money online and offline, including online business, side gigs, freelancing, marketing, sales funnels, investing, and much more.
Join 100,000+ listeners and get legit business ideas and passive income strategies straight to your earbuds. No BS, just actionable tips on how to start and grow your side hustle.
Hosted by Nick Loper of Side Hustle Nation.
23 March 2026, 9:00 am - 39 minutes 46 seconds729: $500,000 in Hamster Ball Sales? How a College Student Brought a New Product to Life
Half a million dollars in hamster balls. What if you spotted a gap in a market that hadn’t changed in 50 years and turned it into a fast-growing product business while still in college?
That’s exactly what Ethan Haber did with Happy Habitats, a small pet products company he started as a sophomore at Wake Forest University.
While watching his hamster Mooksy roll around in a standard hamster ball on campus, Ethan looked over and saw someone walking a dog.
The thought hit him: why can’t I walk my hamster? That simple question launched a product line now heading into 1,500 stores nationwide through a major big-box retail deal.
Ethan’s story covers everything from cold-emailing a design firm and navigating COVID shipping delays, to cracking Amazon and landing a mentorship with the founder of PetSmart — all from a niche that most people overlook.
Tune in to Episode 729 of the Side Hustle Show to learn:
- how to take an existing product and improve upon it to create a defensible business
- what it really takes to get your product into retail stores and online marketplaces
- why patents, packaging, and the right partners matter more than most first-time founders realize
Full Show Notes: $500,000 in Hamster Ball Sales? How a College Student Brought a New Product to Life
New to the Show? Get your personalized money-making playlist here!
Sponsors:
- Indeed – Start hiring NOW with a $75 sponsored job credit to upgrade your job post!
- Quo (formerly OpenPhone) — Get 20% off of your first 6 months!
- Shopify — Sign up for a $1 per month trial!
- Gusto — Get 3 months free of the leading payroll, benefits, and HR provider for modern small businesses!
About The Side Hustle Show
This is the entrepreneurship podcast you can actually apply!
The award-winning small business show covers the best side hustles and side hustle ideas. We share how to start a business and make money online and offline, including online business, side gigs, freelancing, marketing, sales funnels, investing, and much more.
Join 100,000+ listeners and get legit business ideas and passive income strategies straight to your earbuds. No BS, just actionable tips on how to start and grow your side hustle.
Hosted by Nick Loper of Side Hustle Nation.
19 March 2026, 9:00 am - 19 minutes 35 seconds728: $28k Hanging Balloons, $115k/mo Selling Spreadsheets, the 6-Figure AI Monk, and More
In This Week In Side Hustles, I'm bringing you some of the unique side hustles that have come across my desk this week.
There are so many creative ways to make serious money, from local, in-person services to completely AI-created online side hustles.
If you'd like to read more about the individual side hustles, check out the resources below.
https://www.the-sun.com/money/15971252/flight-attendant-party-rental-ballon-business-side-hustle/
https://www.reddit.com/r/passive_income/comments/1r9f0xs/this_google_sheets_seller_is_making_115kmonth_and/https://spotlight.ebu.ch/p/yang-mun-ai-influencer-scam
New to the Show? Get your personalized money-making playlist here!
Sponsors:
- Indeed – Start hiring NOW with a $75 sponsored job credit to upgrade your job post!
- Quo (formerly OpenPhone) — Get 20% off of your first 6 months!
- Shopify — Sign up for a $1 per month trial!
About The Side Hustle Show
This is the entrepreneurship podcast you can actually apply!
The award-winning small business show covers the best side hustles and side hustle ideas. We share how to start a business and make money online and offline, including online business, side gigs, freelancing, marketing, sales funnels, investing, and much more.
Join 100,000+ listeners and get legit business ideas and passive income strategies straight to your earbuds. No BS, just actionable tips on how to start and grow your side hustle.
Hosted by Nick Loper of Side Hustle Nation.
16 March 2026, 9:00 am - 43 minutes 57 seconds727: $250/hr by Productizing Your Expertise
What if you could earn $250-$300 an hour solving a problem most people would rather avoid? Jim Lashbaugh did exactly that, and last year, it added about $40,000 in extra income.
Jim is a retired firefighter who spent nearly three decades on the job. On the side, he flipped houses. And as part of that, he had to wrestle with one of the most annoying parts of real estate development: building permits.
He got good at it, but he never planned to do it for anyone else.
Then a friend asked for help. Then a stranger called. And SynergyPermits.com was born.
Jim joined the show to share how he turned a very specific, very unglamorous skill into a flexible side hustle without cold calling, without ads, and without any formal credentials.
Tune in to Episode 727 of the Side Hustle Show to learn:
- how to find the niche skill hiding in your own experience
- a simple pricing shift that can double or triple your effective hourly rate
- the one-question close that converts almost every prospect into a paying client
Full Show Notes: $250/hr by Productizing Your Expertise
New to the Show? Get your personalized money-making playlist here!
Sponsors:
- Indeed – Start hiring NOW with a $75 sponsored job credit to upgrade your job post!
- Quo (formerly OpenPhone) — Get 20% off of your first 6 months!
- Shopify — Sign up for a $1 per month trial!
About The Side Hustle Show
This is the entrepreneurship podcast you can actually apply!
The award-winning small business show covers the best side hustles and side hustle ideas. We share how to start a business and make money online and offline, including online business, side gigs, freelancing, marketing, sales funnels, investing, and much more.
Join 100,000+ listeners and get legit business ideas and passive income strategies straight to your earbuds. No BS, just actionable tips on how to start and grow your side hustle.
Hosted by Nick Loper of Side Hustle Nation.
12 March 2026, 9:00 am - 41 minutes 10 secondsThe 6-Figure Side Hustle Cleaning Up Parking Lots (Greatest Hits)
This week’s guest started his side hustle with the goal of earning an extra $1,000 a month. Four summers later and it’s now a 6-figure business!
Blademir Hernandez is a Side Hustle Show listener who was inspired by Brian Winch’s story in episode 266 to start his business.
Brian built a $650k a year operation picking up litter and cleaning parking lots — something Blademir felt confident he could do, too.
Blademir reached out to Brian and ran the idea past him, before going out and finding property managers in his area to pitch his litter picking service to.
This story is a perfect example of what can happen when you take inspiration from a proven business model and execute your own game plan.
Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to hear how:
- he found his first customers
- to price and sell a local lot sweeping service
- Blademir has scaled his business
Full Show Notes: The 6-Figure Side Hustle Cleaning Up Parking Lots
New to the Show? Get your personalized money-making playlist here!
Sponsors:
- Indeed – Start hiring NOW with a $75 sponsored job credit to upgrade your job post!
- Quo (formerly OpenPhone) — Get 20% off of your first 6 months!
- Shopify — Sign up for a $1 per month trial!
- Gusto — Get 3 months free of the leading payroll, benefits, and HR provider for modern small businesses!
9 March 2026, 9:00 am - More Episodes? Get the App