Making money from a side hustle (podcast)

I recently had the opportunity to participate in a podcast called Pocket Money, a podcast about money, life and everything in between. This particular episode was about making money from a side hustle, hosted by revered Australian journalist Kate Browne and digital finance guru Sally McMullen.

Usually, I can talk about the concept of blogging as a side hustle all day and into the night but I’ve got to admit, I find podcasts a bit daunting. I can’t quite explain why, perhaps it’s the thought of my ad-lib thoughts being recorded forever? But with the hosts Kate and Sally being such lovely people and natural conversationalists I felt more at ease during the recording of this episode… hopefully this come across when you listen to it!

You can check out the end result below, Episode 215 of the Pocket Money podcast entitled ‘Can you really make money from a side hustle?’. My interview starts just after the 18 minute mark.

Feel free to drop me a line and let me know what you think.

TRANSCRIPT:

Kate
If you don’t have things to sell online, you can always make some extra cash from your skills. And that’s where our next guest comes in. We’ve got Jake with us and he’s using his writing skills to do exactly that. Welcome to Pocket Money, Jake.

Jake
Thanks Kate, it’s great to be here!

Kate
Jake, can you tell us a little bit about yourself.

Jake
Certainly, I am an author and blogger. I blog on The Freedom Chaser, and have also recently written a digital guide called It Pays To Blog. I absolutely love blogging, which started as a passion project for me many years ago. Now it’s turned into something that is a regular side hustle for me.

Sally
Do you have a full-time job as well? And how did you get started doing blogging as a side hustle?

Jake
I do have a full-time job. I work in digital marketing. So, it’s a natural fit for me to be attracted to blogging, I suppose. This will make me sound old, but believe it or not I’ve actually been blogging since 2002. The first blog I actually started was while I was at uni, and as I’m sure many can relate I didn’t have a whole lot of money at uni. So I started a t-shirt blog being with the sole aim of getting a few free tees. That kind of escalated pretty quickly, and next thing I had a wardrobe full of 400 t-shirts, not knowing what to do with them all. Things have just progressed from there. Over the years I’ve learned a few tricks, met plenty of cool people and learned how to make a few quid out of blogging itself.

Kate
Jake, there’s probably a million maybe a billion unread blogs out there. How have you made yours stand out and how have you monetized it? You mentioned that you started a blog like so many people do when they’re at uni or I remember starting a blog right back when it was a new thing but in never occurred to me to kind of monetize it or market it. How did you do that?

Jake
In terms of the monetization aspect, I guess, looking back at that original blog which was called Tshirt Alert, I’m a very curious person. I’m in the world of digital marketing because I love technology and how it can assist us, but also how we can market within it. And with Tshirt Alert, to be honest, after a while I got sick of the t-shirts themselves and started diving into the technology which powered my blog. I started selling ads, I started selling links, and I kind of got addicted to discovering new monetization opportunities and just kept seeking them out. Tshirt Alert was a lot of trial and error, and eventually was something that I sold because it was ranking really well in organic search and I’d lost the fire in my belly for t-shirts itself. But it left me with this real yearning to know what else could be done with blogs. T-shirts aren’t great for affiliate marketing and affiliate marketing was something I was really keen to explore more. That’s the reason that The Freedom Chaser was basically conceived, as I’m now to a point in my life where I’ve also got friends that ask me often ‘What tool do you use to do X, Y or Z?’ So The Freedom Chaser is often about, you know, referring the best bits of software, the best tools, even the best physical products. There’s a lot of affiliate marketing that goes on, on there.

Kate
What is affiliate marketing? How does it work?

Jake
Affiliate marketing, it’s a pretty simple principle. If you think about it in the real world, someone says, ‘This product is great, and I highly recommend it’. And if the person that they recommend it to buys it, the recommender gets a clip of the sale. In the digital world, that’s usually pretty easy to track. Either click on a link and the link tracks back to the source, or sometimes you might send someone a promo code that can also track back to the source. But yeah, it’s essentially a way of clipping the ticket when something is sold.

Kate
Blogging has been around for a long time now and there’s always a lot of talk about things like Instagram and other platforms. Is blogging still a really solid way to go in your opinion?

Jake
Yeah, most definitely. I mean, I look Instagram, Facebook, you know, this month it’s Tik Tok. All of these things are marketing channels that point back to the hub. And that hub is the blog. I don’t see that changing in the next 10 years, maybe even 20 years, because websites, you know, they’re here to stay. The technology around them will change as we continue to evolve.

Sally
And what would be your top tips for somebody wanting to earn money from blogging?

Jake
Yeah, I touched on it before, but the whole planning piece is pretty critical. It sounds so American when I say it, but there was this phrase that I heard quite a few years ago, that ‘the riches are in the niches’. It’s so true, the niches are really the key to giving yourself the opportunity to build some authority relatively quickly these days. You mentioned it before Kate, there’s probably a billion blogs in the world. So the way to stand out is to find a niche, get recognised as an authority in the niche, then grow from there. That’s something that a lot of people don’t acknowledge when they start a blog. They try and be everything to everyone. So that part’s really critically, the initial research into a niche that’s going to work for you. And then just planning and consistency. If you’re consistent with your stream of blog content, and consistent with your tone of voice, your audience will, you know, develop an affinity to your and your content and continue to come back to your blog time after time, and refer it to their friends. I also recommend going in with a plan for how you’re going to monetize a blog. So like I mentioned before T shirt alert was more about the ad revenue and the free tees. The Freedom Chaser is more about the affiliate side of things.

Sally
And would knowing your audience as well Jake, be another piece of advice that is important? Like you’ve mentioned building a niche. So you obviously want to go for a certain type of person or people that share an interest in it, isn’t it important to get to know your audience so you do have that authority?

Jake
Yeah, totally. I even get down to the point of for each piece of content defining who I’m actually writing the content piece for, and sometimes that can be literally one person. So I hear a question from someone and go, ‘Okay, I’m gonna write a content piece specifically for them, knowing that they’ll probably share it with five of their similar friends’. And coming back to that niche focus I mentioned before, at least you know, you’re going to hit an audience no matter how small, as opposed to just spraying and praying but reaching no one. So yeah, I think knowing your audience in and having a clear picture of who that is, is pretty vital.

Kate
And I guess one that you’re also personally passionate about, or invested in. So you get that authenticity.

Jake
Yeah, that’s it. I mean, I kind of write to two people on The Freedom Chaser that are in a similar life stage to me. Parents of young family looking to, you know, get a bit of income on the side to support things like holidays and who love the idea of living laidback and comfortable coastal lifestyle. I’m sure there’s plenty of people in Australia that can relate to that. So that’s what I really like to talk to.

Sally
Well, thank you so much for that, Jake. And where can our listeners go to learn more about you and The Freedom Chaser?

Jake
That’s not a problem at all, Sally. Thanks for having me. You can find out more about The Freedom Chaser and what I do there on thefreedomchaser.com.

Kate
Thanks so much. I’m feeling like I want to go and start a blog now.