062: Nick Loper – The Side Hustle

How to Turn Your Spare Time into $1000 a Month or More

Nick Loper helps people earn money outside of their day job. He’s an author, online entrepreneur, and host of the award-winning The Side Hustle Show podcast, which features new part-time business ideas each week. As Chief Side Hustler at SideHustleNation.com, he loves deconstructing the tactics and strategies behind building extra income streams.

What We Discuss with Nick Loper:

How Nick uses Permafree on Amazon to introduce his book
How he figured out the title and subtitle
How to find an idea that’s worth talking about
Tracking the right people
Narrating your audiobook right through these strategies
Tactics to attract attention to your book
The power of asking for reviews from people who have read your book
Leveraging your book to grow your business and why a book is recession-proof

[01:22] Behind-The-Scenes of His Upcoming Book

Nick has been using Permafree on Amazon since early 2015. He was told that putting his book for free on Amazon can capture a huge audience of potential search traffic.

Working on revising his previous book, The Side Hustle Path, Nick ended up bulldozing the content and rewrote the book.

Nick has owned the “side hustle” keyword on Google, Amazon, and iTunes for a long time. Then Chris Guillebeau came along and launched the Side Hustle School and the Side Hustle book. He has never seen a bigger spike in terms of interest and podcast downloads. Bringing with Chris this huge built-in audience, he introduced his brand of entrepreneurship.

Alongside, Nick wanted to rank for the term “side hustle” as well. The intention was to make the title of his book short, simple, and with the value proposition at the end.

[07:16] The Book Writing Process

Looking at which episodes of his podcast that received the most data, the most downloads, and the most positive feedback, he also considered his favorites.

The outline dictated where to go. He started with the big three business models:

Selling a service
Selling a product
The audience or attention business

[09:35] Tips for Generating Ideas and Side Hustling

Take your own spin on something that’s similar.

Combine your interest in Topic A with your experience in Area B and arrive at a unique sweet spot.

Most ideas come internally. Find something that’s already inside you.

[13:22] Ways to Monetize Your Book

Using Permafree, you could be sacrificing your royalty upfront but what you get in exchange is attracting a long-term follower or subscriber.

Side Hustle Nation makes money through sponsorships on the show and affiliate offers.

Examples:

ChooseFI Podcast is marketing financial independence lifestyle.

If you want to build a meaningful business, it’s not going to happen tomorrow. It’s going to take a while to help you along the way.

Listen to Episode 38 with Steve Scott as he shares about how he went from $0 to $40,00 in monthly sales.

Also, check out Episode 49 featuring Alex Barker whose business is built around coaching pharmacists to get better jobs. And he leverages his book Indispensable: The Prescription for a Fulfilling Pharmacy Career to educate people about him and draw them into his coaching and community.

[21:34] Narrating the Audiobook

Nick wrote the book and read the audiobook version immediately afterward so the words were still fresh in his head.

The engineering part isn’t the most expensive but the studio time the engineer is sitting there waiting for you to get right.

[26:35] Attracting Attention

Because it was an updated title, it slid in under the old listening which already had a good bank of positive reviews.

Wanting to wait until the release of the audiobook, the idea was to attract new customers. But he promoted it still to existing customers to spike the rank and get additional exposure.

You have to constantly keep getting reviews. It can be tiring to ask people for reviews but they’re very important.

You’ve got to educate authors to teach your reviewers on two things:

1. You can always change a review for them.

2. Help them realize that they don’t have to read the whole book to leave a review. They can just say what they like about the book or which chapter grabbed you and why.

[35:13] Books Are Recession-Proof

You don’t have to invest a lot of money to write a book. Find a niche you like and one that’s profitable.

Whether there’s a recession or not, books are an affordable luxury. You can spend a few bucks to get lost in the world or get information about something you don’t know.

Books can also help you monetize other areas. You can leverage it in your blogs or speaking career.