Nick Loper helps people earn money outside of their day job. He’s an author, online entrepreneur, and host of the award-winning Side Hustle Show podcast, which features new part-time business ideas each week. As Chief Side Hustler at SideHustleNation, he loves deconstructing the tactics and strategies behind building extra income streams.
What is The Side Hustle Show all about?
The Side Hustle Show is about building extra income streams in your spare time. It’s primarily interview-based, which has given me the chance to showcase hundreds of creative and inspiring entrepreneurs. I love the variety of side hustle ideas and have a real curiosity to learn how other people made their business work.
Tell us a little bit about your personal background – how, and why you started your podcast?
After college, I did what I was “supposed to” do, and got a corporate job. With no desire to climb the corporate ladder, I began looking right away for a way out. For me, that was an online business – a comparison shopping site for shoes. I didn’t have a passion for the product – the shoes themselves, but loved the process of building and growing the business, with all the bumps and bruises along the way.
That site eventually gave me the courage and income to say good-bye to my corporate gig and become a full-time entrepreneur. It felt like I’d beaten the system, to have “retired” at 25. I was naïve in thinking the shoe business might be “my thing” forever.
While I was mostly focused on driving traffic and selling shoes, I started several other projects, including the personal blog that eventually morphed into Side Hustle Nation. When I made that transition, I started the podcast as well.
It really came from asking some of the typical side hustle questions:
- What really lights you up?
- What do you never get tired of talking about?
- What do you want to be known for when someone Googles you?
In my case, the answer to all of those kept coming back to this lower-risk brand of entrepreneurship. A side hustle had been my escape route from Corporate America, and I felt like I could help others make the leap as well.
What was the biggest problem you encountered launching your podcast and how did you overcome it?
There are so many challenges, many of which stemmed from not having any idea what I was doing! I think the biggest challenge I faced and that most new podcast hosts face is the discoverability problem. How do you get your show in front of your target listeners? How do you get people to know you even exist?
I didn’t have any audience to speak of at the time. My email list, if you could call it that, was 11 people – entirely friends and family. But what I did have was several years of Gmail contact history, so I went through and individually emailed people I thought might be interested in what I was working on, and invited them to check out the show.
That personal outreach, along with some attention-getting episode titles, helped give the iTunes algorithm a little nudge and the show began to get some traction in those first few weeks.
What are some mistakes you made as a podcaster?
I exported my first 7 episodes in Stereo, not Mono, for one. I would get messages from listeners saying they could hear my questions in their earbud, but not the guest’s answers. So that was a little embarrassing.
I think the biggest mistake though was not having any sort of concerted business or strategy on the back-end for the first year or more of the show. I was still relying on the shoe business for income, so I didn’t necessarily need the podcast to be making money, but the show started to get much better results when I started treating it more like a content marketing channel for Side Hustle Nation, rather than a business all on its own.
By that I mean I started an intentional effort to convert listeners into email subscribers, and that was a big inflection point for the show and for the business.
Do you have any other projects or businesses you working on?
Over the last 8 years, the podcast really has become the main focus. I shut down the shoe business about 18 months after starting Side Hustle Nation. As the platform grew, I scaled back on most of my side hustle experiments as well, which ranged from freelance recruiting and book editing to selling on Fiverr, to flipping products on Amazon and eBay. And last fall, I finally sold one of my longest-running side projects, a site called Virtual Assistant Assistant, to focus on Side Hustle Nation and fatherhood full-time.
Do you monetize your Podcast, or plan on monetizing, tell us how or how you plan to do it?
The Side Hustle Show is primarily monetized through traditional sponsorships. It was probably in the 3rd year of the show when sponsors began reaching out, and it’s become a significant income stream since then. I remember the first year when the ad income matched my old day job salary and it was such a cool feeling to think I could just do the show once a week and make the same as I did working 9-5.
Other income streams for the business include affiliate marketing through the website and email list and selling my own products and services. Those have mostly been Amazon books so far, but I’m experimenting with more digital products lately.
How do you stay driven and motivated to keep going in your business and podcast?
Getting notes from listeners is huge for me. I have a little folder in Gmail called “Testimonials” where I file away all the nice things people send me. It’s a very anonymous medium, where people can tune in for years without having any direct interaction with you, so when you get a note from someone saying you’ve impacted their life, that’s really powerful.
What has been your most effective marketing strategy to grow your audience?
Podcast marketing is a bit of a long game and really a combination of different factors. I’ll say that the biggest spikes I’ve seen on the download chart have come as a result of guesting on other relevant shows. It’s rare for me to proactively pitch to be a guest, but I’ll also rarely turn down a guest invite.
Another advantage I believe The Side Hustle Show has is that SideHustleNation does pretty well in terms of SEO. That means I get a pretty steady stream of new visitors to the site, and inside my posts I can reference specific relevant episodes and encourage people to check out the podcast.
What is your definition of success?
Success is being in control of your own calendar – getting to choose how you spend your days. And you can begin practicing that today, by carving out 15 minutes here, half an hour there, to move forward on the projects you care about.
If you had to start a brand-new podcast today, what are the steps you would take?
Think first about what your unique value proposition is. Remember, if you can’t be first, be different. Jonathan Mendonsa from ChooseFI told me that. He definitely wasn’t the first personal finance podcast, but he took a different angle with a unique and upfront focus on financial independence.
Next, pay attention to audio quality. You don’t need a professional recording studio, but the rise of big media and big money in podcasting means your competition sounds a lot better than they did 10 years ago.
Third, consider video. I know it’s weird to say because I don’t do much with video right now, but I see YouTube as a powerful search and discovery engine for new podcasters. I don’t know if it’s a great medium for full episodes, but it’s definitely worth playing around with and even testing the Joe Rogan-like strategy of publishing short, keyword-focused clips. You never know where your next big fan is going to find you, but it’s much faster to get content ranking in YouTube than it is on Google.
What’s your best piece of advice for aspiring and new podcasters?
With every episode you create, think about how you’re climbing the listener pyramid. This is an imaginary ladder from strangers, to listeners, to subscribers, to fans.
How will strangers find this? YouTube? Pinterest? Instagram?
What will compel them to tune in? How’s my title? Does it invoke curiosity?
When someone does listen, what’s to keep them coming back for more? Can you promote or mention previous relevant episodes? Can you tease what’s coming up? Do you have a relevant lead magnet they should opt-in for?
To convert listeners to fans, in my case, it’s usually about someone taking action and seeing results. Once that happens, they’re a believer, an evangelist. Those are the people who buy your products or services, and tell all their friends how awesome you are. It’s through their word-of-mouth-sharing that new people enter the bottom of the pyramid and begin the climb of their own.
How can readers get in touch with you?
Side Hustle Nation is the home base for the blog and podcast, and my most active social channel is the Side Hustle Nation Facebook group.
Top 3 Business Mistakes: Nick Loper of Side Hustle Nation: My Top 3 Business Mistakes
