How Jamie Northrup Earns +$6k/Month From Multiple Income Streams
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Jamie Northrup is no stranger to the โmake money onlineโ scene. Heโs been doing it for almost 20 years with varying success, depending on the strategy.
For years he has been developing different income streams, focusing particularly on side hustles with no customers, with considerable success. When he was laid off, he was lucky he didnโt have to worry, because he had a solid hustle or two to keep him afloat.
Fast forward to today, and Jamie runs the Minimalist Hustler brand, where he teaches people to develop their own side hustles. He has several different income streams, from products to newsletters, and is on track to hit six figures in 2025.
Watch the Full Episode
Jamie Northrup's been making money online since the 1990s using different strategies and eventually started building websites. He left that to dabble in other side hustles but found that many werenโt scalable, so he set himself a goal: to make money without customers.
Jamie was able to build up some solid side hustles, and when he was laid off from his job suddenly, he had the security of those projects to fall back on.
Today he runs five different newsletters, a community, and a blog called Minimalist Hustler, among other products, and will crack six figures next year.
His main project is a newsletter with +8k subscribers, around which everything else revolves. He also has a blog on Medium and he grows his newsletter on Medium, he publishes books on Amazon KDP, and he has a community on Skool. He does print-on-demand and has digital products on Gumroad.
He talks about KDP, which is one of his main sources of revenue, where heโs published 500 books. He talks about the types of books he creates, how he validates his ideas, and how to be successful on the platform.
He also shares his marketing strategies and explains how he uses keyword research to get his books found.
Then Jamie talks about starting to send out short, daily emails in February 2022 to help people make more money. He talks about how he did it and what heโs learned, and how he incorporates sponsorships that really align with his readers.
He then discusses creating a premium version of his newsletter, which involves creating a weekly version of his newsletter on Substack.
Moving along, Jamie talks briefly about the make-up and price point of his community and then discusses the main levels for newsletter growth and offers a detailed comparison of Substack vs. ConvertKit.
Jared asks him about the growth and sales of his other products and the profile of the people who typically buy his products, and he also offers helpful advice for people who are just beginning their side hustle.
Jamie concludes by talking about his plans for the near future and encourages people to sign up for his newsletter at Minimalist Hustler.
Links & Resources
- Minimalist Hustler
- Medium
- Amazon KDP
- Skool
- Gumroad
- Self Publishing Titans
- Publisher Rocket
- Bookbub
- Josh Spector
Topics Jamie Northup Talks About
- How he got started making money online
- Why itโs a good idea to have a side hustle
- His current projects
- His main sources of revenue
- Publishing on KDP
- Marketing on KDP
- Getting your books found
- Starting to send daily emails
- Sponsorships
- Creating a premium version of his newsletter
- Building his community
- Substack vs. ConvertKit
- Typical avatar
- Advice for new hustlers
- His future plans
Transcript
Jared: You're almost like a human test case for all of us wondering which side hustles to go into and test. You kind of test them all for us and tell us how they're going. That was like my
Jamie: only goal, make money with no customers, which kind of sounds odd, but I found a few different ways to do it. Maybe fill us in on where Minimalist Hustler is right now.
Went small and now we're back to getting pretty big again, but it's different now. It's on my terms. From the beginning. 2012 to 2013 is about thirty some thousand dollars in profit. Next year I'll definitely get through to the six figures. In terms of where your
Jared: revenue comes from, like, what are the big dominant sources?
I mean, I have over 500 books on KDP that are not related at all to Minimalist Luster. Publishing 500 books seems unapproachable, but you say it like it's almost just something that you did really quickly. Because 520 something books, 460 have never sold a single copy. Wow, that's fascinating. Where are you finding the biggest growth?
When it comes to your newsletter size. Medium was
Jamie: my number one source of new subscribers on the regular. It was, you know, 100 to 200 new subscribers every
Jared: month. You have something from you, something from someone else, something from a sponsor. Like, how did you land on that? You want that sponsorship
Jamie: to be part of your newsletter.
If you choose your sponsors properly and they're well aligned, people even like the sponsors more than the actual content. What
Jared: you
Jamie: like, what's working, what's scalable, these sorts of things. I'm not going to tell somebody that I don't like my job, go quit your job. You, you need money. There's no, there's no way around it.
You need an income. You need to pay the bills. Nobody's telling you to stop that. But at the same time, again, take that minimum amount of time that you can give each week.
Jared: Alright, welcome back to the Niche Pursuits podcast. My name is Jared Bauman, and today we are joined by Jamie Northrup, and he is with MinimalistHustler.
com. Jamie, welcome aboard. Thank you so much, Jared. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. I'm glad to have you. This is going to be a fun one because so much of our audience, me at the top of that list, is fascinated by you. enthralled and super engaged in side hustles. Not that everything you're doing is side hustle focused, but I do feel like having gotten to know you and what you're doing, there's so much of that theme that runs through what you're doing.
You have a great story that lends itself on top of that. So, um, I just think people are going to love what we're going to be talking about today. Um, Catch us up on who you are, maybe bring us up to speed, um, to maybe the beginnings of when you started your site and brand.
Jamie: Yeah,
Jared: sure. I mean,
Jamie: it all starts, uh, I've been making money online since the mid nineties.
I started when I was about 13 years old. Uh, my dad was heavy into computers, so it was, uh, You know, I got into it by default, basically through him. And it all started with hockey cards. Uh, I used to collect hockey cards and then I started selling them and buying them online, flipping them locally. I mean, back then there wasn't much people, so it kind of, kind of worked.
And, uh, from there I really started building websites specifically for the cards. Um, then about five years after that, I started branching out, making websites, uh, for other reasons. Uh, some were niche sites, some were for customers locally. It was really wide ranging in terms of websites. I think at the peak of it, there was about 38 different websites.
I was running about 12 for me and about two dozen for customers. Yeah, it was, uh, that was mid 2000, more or less. It was, uh, just, you know, the 0 phase. Uh, I was really heavy into WordPress back then. And, uh, it was a big fan. I used to go to WordCamps and the conferences and all that. And. Uh, basically build a whole web consulting agency around that.
Um, and I thought that was going to be my future. That was going to be my pathway from my nine to five. Um, but at a certain point, I believe the 2017, 18 things started getting a little bit shaky. In terms of, I didn't really enjoy dealing with the customer aspect of it. So, you know, building websites for myself that I enjoyed was great, but building websites based on somebody else's vision, somebody else's, like, it didn't really appeal to me as much anymore, especially dealing with the feedback and, you know, the complaints and.
I was managing people's whole, you know, online business, including emails. So when there was, you know, errors or problems with emails, even though they were unrelated to anything that had to do with me, I was their first call every time. And, you know, that could be at random hours. So I just kind of started thinking, you know, I need to find something more enjoyable, something that fits who I am.
And that's when I started looking at options. And I, I tried, I would say over two dozen different side hustles. Some online, some offline, you know, I, I did the, you know, the ones you think of first, like a Uber Eats, TaskRabbit, I tried all those. Um, and you know, to a certain level, they were fun. I love driving, so it was fun, but it just wasn't scalable, right?
So it was kind of trying to balance something that I could scale while enjoying it as well. So my resolution for 2020 was actually to figure out how could I make money without customers? That was like my only goal, make money with no customers. Which kind of sounds odd, but I found a few different ways to do it.
And that kind of led me to, you know, to Minimalist Hustler, the brand, which was, I, at first just for that, and then it kind of like developed over the past four and a half years into what it is today, which is five different newsletters, a community, um, you know, a blog and, and many books as well, and other products.
So it's kind of like, it started out big, then it. Went small and now we're back to getting pretty big again, but it's, it's a different now it's on my terms. So it's, it's really something
Jared: that, you know, I enjoy now. Maybe fill us in on where Minimalist Hustler is right now. Yep. And then we can get into the different things that make it up.
You talked about books and newsletter and blogging and products and community, and there's a lot that goes into it. Uh, but where are you at right now? Any, any stats or figures or numbers you're comfortable sharing? Yeah, uh, sure. Uh, I mean, I, so
Jamie: my growth from 2012 to 2013 was basically the biggest jump I had.
It was 2. 4 times bigger in terms of profit. Uh, we're looking at about, back then it was about 30 some thousand dollars in profit. And I still had a nine to five and so it was great, you know, a little side thing, extra money and all that. Um, then I got laid off, uh, for almost 20 years last August. So I went full time, uh, onto the Minimalist Hustler.
And now I'm, I don't think I'm gonna make it this year, but next year I'll definitely get through to the six figures. It'll be my first 100, 000 a year, and I'm, you know, and, and the way I've built this, It's, it's a slow growth, but it's a sure growth, almost, you know,
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Well, you know, it's funny, we're recording this at the end of August, so it's been basically, I have it correct, about a year since you were laid off and have been making this your, your full time income. That's right, it'll be, uh, two weeks, uh, it'll be a year. Congratulations, that's a big deal. I mean, I feel like I've talked about this in my own personal newsletter at Week in Growth, like Side hustles, obviously you kind of touched on all of it.
They give you that extra cash. They give you that extra income. You can use that whether it's saving, whether it's, you know, paying a bill, whether it's paying down debt, whether it's for a vacation, but then they also give you this fantastic, I don't want to call it a relief, but this interesting, um, uh, thing that can happen when life changes and you get laid off, for example, and freedom and options, it gives you, you know,
Jamie: it's I talk to my wife sometimes and I'm like, You know, I've always wanted to try different jobs that were kind of, you know, I don't want to say odd jobs, but like, I've always wanted to work in a casino or for an airline or on a cruise.
Um, you know, I, uh, I'm a big hockey fan. My kids play hockey. I coach them, but I'd love to work in the hockey field somewhere. And there was never really that possibility. I didn't see the possibility before, but now that money is not necessarily the concern, it gives you a lot more flexibility to maybe take one of those.
On call jobs or part time jobs, or, you know, even, even if it's a low pain one, it wouldn't really matter as much just, you know, to have the experience. But it also gives me the option right now. My kids are still young. I get to spend more time with them. Uh, you know, I never miss any games or practices because of work.
I get to go on the road with them when there's away tournaments and stuff like that. So it really gives you options, whether you want a nine to five or don't. So you are basically a full time side hustler. If that's the biggest, that's what people still ask me. Do you still call those side hustle? I still, I still do.
Because to me, it's been built in a way that they have all the side hustle features. It just happens to be when you add them together, it brings a full time. And
Jared: that's awesome. Okay. So let's get, let's get into it. Let's get a little dirty here. Let's, let's kind of really dig in and roll up our sleeves.
What are, I'll put it this way where the buckets that make up. What you're pursuing maybe to, to your point, you just said now, like it's made up of a lot of side hustles. Like, what are those talk us through from a high level, each of them, the movement kind of get into each of them. Yeah, for sure. Uh, I mean, I'm a big,
Jamie: try, try it.
Don't like plan too much. Don't dig too deep, try it and then see if it works for you. And if it's successful or not. So I've tried so many different things, but right now the things that are working right now for, for Milvus Hustler is definitely everything is around my newsletter. So I have one big.
Newsletter that's over 8, 000 subscribers and everything I do kind of rotates around that So I have a a blog on medium where I earn on medium and I also grow my newsletter from medium So it's like two things there the same thing. I publish books on amazon kdp Uh, so that feeds back to do like in the books They feed back to the newsletter and the newsletter promotes the books everything I do kind of try and gravitate towards the newsletter I have a community on school um So those are basically the three biggest, I also do print on demand.
I also have printables, digital products on gum road. Um, those are the ones that are really connected to minimalist hustler to a certain level. I mean, I have over 500 books on KDP that are not related at all to minimalist hustler that I started with, which bring in a pretty good income, but they're not related to minimalist hustler because like I said, when I started, At 2020, my goal was to have no customers and as Amazon KDP is the perfect place to have no customers and I just did a whole bunch of no and low content books and it was really a quantity over quality at the beginning until I kind of figured things out and that's what really gave me the first steady, decent stream of income online, uh, for, to start Minimalist Hustler.
But now I'm making books for the Minimus Hustler audience. So it kind of, again, rotates back to the, to the
Jared: newsletter. In terms of where your revenue comes from, like what are the big dominant sources? Are there like one or two dominant or larger sources of revenue? So people
Jamie: ask me this question quite often, and it's, it's kind of, what do you consider an income source or stream?
Right? So the, my biggest one without a doubt is Amazon KDP. That's this without a doubt. It's the one that brings in the biggest. Okay. So, are you considering Minimalist Hustler as a newsletter with everything tied back to it as one stream, or is it multiple streams? If you consider it as one, it's getting close to what KDP is bringing me without the Minimalist Hustler content.
But if not, it's KDP dominates for
Jared: sure. I get that. Yeah, I get that. So the minimalist hustler kind of brand touches on a number of different revenue streams. And so if you look at it from a holistic standpoint, it's rivaling your KDP. But if you were to break, maybe just like newsletter sponsorship or something specific inside of it, it doesn't, that's it.
You know, like if you break down
Jamie: affiliate marketing, if you break down my, you know, the books that, that go with minimalist hustler, the digital products, the sponsorships, as you mentioned, and now I have, you know, Uh, paid subscriptions as well. It's, it, it all, like they're all, some are smaller than others and medium, but together they, they're getting close to taking over, uh, what I had built with KDP previously.
Jared: Let's start with KDP if we can, because I, I was introduced to you through your Minimalist Hustler newsletter. So, um, I definitely want to spend some time talking about that. Um, very organic process. I got on your, I got on your email list. I love getting different email newsletters and really enjoyed it.
Well, let's come back to that. Uh, KDP was your first, like you said, your first in this transition into building a business that had no customers, which I love. And I think a lot of the audience can really get around. Yeah. We've got a lot of people who listen and we're like, man, I don't want to talk to someone.
I don't want to deal with customer service. A lot of people come from affiliate marketing and these sorts of spaces where we don't have to necessarily interact with customers. We just did an interview a couple of weeks ago, maybe a KDP and, and really got deep into KDP. But for you, what has been successful with KDP?
I mean, publishing 500 books seems unapproachable, but you say it like it's almost just something that you did really quickly walk us through what that looks like.
Jamie: Yeah, so it's first, it's important to understand, uh, the difference between a regular book. Um, I, I have three categories of books that I, I go through, but my initial business on KDP was built on no content books.
So that looks like daily planners, uh, work books, log books, trackers. Uh, you know, people often say journals, but journals, I haven't had any successful journals, but I haven't put a lot of time into that either. So I can't really speak on that, but a lot of it is, is the workbooks and the activity books. Um, so it's, I did about eight months in 2021 of almost 90 percent of my time spent on KDP.
This was before I started the newsletter and, you know, out of the 500, and I figured it's. I think it's 520 something books, 450 or 460, I've never sold a single copy. Yeah. Carefully. It's very, uh, truly the 80, 20. Right. But what happened was, is once you identify one that sells regularly, and even if that's only once a week, you could easily duplicate and adapt the process.
Now, uh, you know, for example, If I'm making a book, uh, you know, to track for a certain kind of income, well, then I could change that to a different type of income without getting into too many details there. But it's like, if I'm doing a book, that's going to track red cars and it works, then I can make a book that tracks blue cars and then green cars.
And so on. So once you find something that works, it's easy to. You know, get variations of it. That will work as well. When
Jared: it comes to success on KDP, were there any trending things you've, you've seen, I mean, over 500 books published, you've probably have some decent insights, especially given that so many haven't sold any.
Yeah. I mean, the, the key to
Jamie: me was looking at me, my family and people around me. And figure out what would they buy, what would they be interested, and above all else is what would they want to receive as a gift. Since I started in 2021, I've given out more books as gifts than anything else just because I've been able to make custom things that I know people would really, really love.
And I mean it's, it's, that's to me is the, the key is figure out what people would like and find the people, find a specific person. And figure out what they would want. Because if I find something that you want, there's chances are there's hundreds if not thousands, if not, you know, hundreds of thousands of people that want the same thing.
Give us some insight.
Jared: Into what maybe an average book that you produce for a KDP looks like, how long is it maybe a sample type of topic, not saying you got to tell us your actual book title, but maybe like what kind of genre, what kind of lengths, what kind of makeup is it just to give people an idea of what kind of books are doing well for you.
So, so again, it goes into the different
Jamie: categories of books. So the low and no content books, which is the bulk of my 500 and some books, uh, has no real. A lot of it has to do with sports. A lot of it has to do with hockey, because when I started, I wrote a book called, uh, Passion to Passive Profits. And basically that book was detailing how to create income streams that didn't have customers that were related to your passion, which is what I, what I had done.
And so a lot of it has to do with that. So there's most books, it's basically you're designing the cover, the front cover, the back cover, the spine. And then inside, there's like one or two unique pages at the beginning, one or two unique pages at the back. And the rest is like 80, 100, 200 pages of the same exact thing.
It's just, you know, it could be, uh, you know, for example, an undated planner kind of thing. So it's, if it's a weekly one, then each two pages is basically your, your week split up either five weekdays and then the two weekends or however you'd like. I mean, if you just go on, uh, in Gumroad, uh, not Gumroad, in, uh, Canva, and you write, you know, Daily Planner, Weekly Planner, you'll have hundreds of examples that, uh, Kind of work for, for KDP.
You just need to kind of tweak them a little bit to get what you, what you like. I mean, if you're going to mass produce, no content books, then you'd want a specific tool. There's like a few of them out there that I've used. And a book bolt is one of them. Tangent templates is another one. They're both great products.
And, uh, with those products, you can. You could replicate the same book and tweak it a little bit. So if you wanted to make a book for all the Jared's out there, then you make a Jared specific book. Then you can make one for John, Jamie, Steve, and so on. It's very easy to do. And within, you know, a few minutes, you have a new book ready and good to go.
Um, but for my minimalist hustler books, I call those minimalist books. So a minimalist book is any book that's under a hundred pages. All my books are non fiction, but you could apply the same principle to fiction without issue. But all my books are related to minimalist side hustles, which is the niche that I'm in with Minimalist Hustler.
So all those books are related back to the newsletter.
Jared: One final question here on the KDP side of things. Getting your book to kind of show up in the Amazon search ecosystem, a lot of people will say is difficult or challenging. How do you go about getting your Any marketing for the book or do you, do you just kind of publish it and kind of hope that all of the, uh, the stars aligned to get it in front of people when they do a search.
So again, we're, we're
Jamie: splitting this into two. So the pre newsletter, the, all the no content, low contents is a hundred percent organic. I never ran any ads on them. I never did any marketing for them. The whole point of it was. To be able to do this without doing any of that. So a lot of it was keyword research.
There's a few, uh, Chrome extensions you can get, uh, that will show you basically, uh, how many people are searching for which terms on Amazon within the Kindle section or within subcategories. Uh, I think Self Publishing Titans is, uh, one of the people that has, uh, a few different Chrome extensions. Uh, I use Publisher Rocket a lot for keywords and categories too.
Uh, that's a paid tool though, but the self publishing Titans, I think they have a free version that, uh, a lot of, you get a lot of good use out of, um, so that's, that's for the, you know, the, the no, no content books, but the, the ones I'm creating now, uh, most of the promotion is done either through, uh, my newsletter or through my blogs or basically other minimalist hustler related properties kind of thing.
But I am experimenting with Amazon ads and, uh, uh, book bub, but yeah, book ads. And, um, you know, I, I'm just getting into that now. So I wouldn't have any success stories to share on that more, you know, fail stories, I would say, uh, I haven't squandered thousands of dollars, but I've, you know, I don't think I've broken even.
I probably lost in the course of the, I started in July. So probably lost a couple hundred dollars so far. It's helping sell books, but I'm not sure I'm doing it properly. So I actually just got Kindle printer to kind of, Understand Amazon ads
Jared: a little bit better. Well, perfect transition. I mean, we, you keep mentioning minimalist hustler and how that's really where a lot of your focus is now.
Thanks for indulging us with some of your KDP, um, uh, tactics. I sure, I'm sure a lot of people are going to find those really fascinating. KDP is a part of what you're doing now, but kind of from a different standpoint. So let's get into minimalist hustler. Like, where did this kick off? Was it the newsletter?
And is everything the newsletter? You alluded to the fact that kind of the most important aspect of the brand to you is the newsletter of about 8, 000 people, but maybe talk us through how that Minimalist Hustler brand is structured.
Jamie: Yeah,
Jared: so it didn't
Jamie: start with the newsletter. There was never a plan for a newsletter.
Oh, okay. It was maybe the beginning of 2022 that kind of started thinking, well, like, At first I was like, I need some email marketing to kind of help stuff and, you know, market my different assets that I've had on KDP, on Prince on Demand and, and several others. Uh, I was looking at the different options and, uh, I came along a newsletter from Josh Spector.
Somebody I really look up to a lot. He he's taught me so much in the past, uh, two and a half years, maybe even three. Uh, he sends a daily newsletter. That's really, really short. I mean, I think he's got one, one issue that he sent out once only had nine words in it. And it's just really, really short. And I really liked the format.
So I kind of didn't do the same thing, but did it my way. So I really decided I'm going to start sending a daily email. And like, like I said, I don't think too much about things. So. If I want to try something, I'd rather just let's go try it and see what happens. And you know, if, if it works great, if it doesn't work, maybe if I really wanted to work, I'll try and figure out a way to get it to work.
And if not, I'll just move on to the next thing. So in February of 2022, I decided let's do, let's do this daily newsletter. Let's send a short email every day, try and help people make more money. That's what it, that's what it started with. And I think we're at 911 or 912 days later, I've published on every single day since.
And something that I said, I'll do for 30 days and see if I like it has become my favorite thing in the world. It's me in so many different ways. In terms of, yes, there's the um, that comes with it, but the organizing everything I was doing, bringing everything back to one thing, whereas before I was just kind of doing random things and that was on purpose because it served the purpose of, you know, the no customers, the no headaches, the low stress, but this allowed me to actually have conversations with people, build relationships with people and help people at the same time without necessarily calling them customers, even though I am now.
Offering them some of my products, but again, I'm doing it in the what I call the minimalist way It's a very transactional process. So I don't sell high ticket offers. I everything I do is is low ticket and you know the the most expensive thing I sell is a newsletter ad spot, which is now like I mean 75 a spot or 70 a spot which is still really cheap compared to Other newsletters at the same subscriber base that I have but I I really like to make things it I've been for other people so that it's, it's, first of all, they love it, but it's also easier on me.
There's no stress. There's no, like, I rarely ever get any upset, you know, customers or people, you know, I'll get the occasional person saying this, you know, I bought this and I, I don't like it. And it's like, that's fair. Here's a refund. You know, it's, it's not like I'm worried about refunding a thousand dollars or 1, 500 or, you know, back when I was doing websites and people were paying 10, 15, 000 for web design back then.
I don't have to, that stress is gone. So, so that newsletter basically opened the doors to a relationships without necessarily being typical customer relationships that, that one would have.
Jared: Yeah, it truly is a minimalist, uh, yeah, newsletter, right? Like it's short, it's quick. It's to the point I can say that you and I have the most opposite newsletter experience ever when I send mine out.
It's like, someone needs to shorten this up a bit, but I appreciate it. That's it. It does have a theme to it. And you've kind of slipped. Again, I've only been on your list for a month or two, I think, but you kind of have this cadence that you have. You have something from you, something from someone else, something from a sponsor.
Like, how did you land on that? Has that been, um, iterated on over the years, over the 900 emails you talk about? Um, and, and, you know, how did you kind of come up with that sort of, uh, cadence to your emails? The, my first thing
Jamie: is when I, when, so Josh Spector, what he did is he just had one thing. Plus the sponsor and the one thing could it be from him or it could be from someone else.
So I looked at him and at first I didn't I really didn't want to just copy him His whole process and I was also getting I'm not sure if you're familiar. You must be with the James Clear 3 2 1 newsletter Yeah, so it was kind of like both of them having a baby. So I had three things in my newsletter And so it's an extra one then then Josh.
It's a little bit smaller than James Clear, but it's still short to the point and And Being, having something from a sponsor in each one is, you know, people seem turned off by advertisements, but if you choose your sponsors properly and they're well aligned people, even sometimes like the sponsors more than the actual content, depending on what it is.
I mean, when I was younger, uh, I used to love entrepreneur magazine. And one of the things that would get to me is not even the articles. It's looking through the different ads that were, you know, targeted at entrepreneurs and. So it's kind of like you want that sponsorship to be part of your newsletter and not be like, here's the advertiser that you could skip to get the content.
You want it to be part of the content to be valuable. So I've turned down sponsorships from, from brands that just don't align at all, even though they were paying better money or, or the same money. To me, it's, it's more about the experience
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Jared: You, you also have a premium version of your newsletter, if I understand correctly, as kind of tied in with the community.
How did that develop? Where's that at? What's the differences there? So
Jamie: I've, again, it goes back to my trial and errors and, and seeing what, what I should be doing or not doing. So I've, in February of 2023, I decided to create a Weekly version of the daily newsletter on sub stack. Now there was two reasons for that.
The first reason was to have an online archive that was a little bit more practical than having 900 emails that people can go through randomly that, you know, they never would go beyond the last five, maybe. And the second of it is sub stack has a great, uh, you know, audience and grow internal growth tools that you could leverage started that.
And then. With time, Substack released Substack Notes, and the growth potential just kept, you know, being so apparent to me that I, I figured I, I need to kind of expand on that. So I, I started, I, I brainstormed, I came up with another newsletter to launch on Substack, because I really didn't want to move my daily newsletter to Substack, because they don't have the same customization options.
They don't have automation that I have with ConvertKit, which is where I am now. And, uh, so. While I was doing it at Substack, I realized that, you know, people at Substack are already of the mindset to pay for content, to pay for premium newsletters. So I said, well, I might as well turn it on, but I need to, to see what I can give them.
And again, I always go back to my mind, my minimalist mindset of what can I give them that won't add pressure to me? So, You know, some people say, well, I'll give you an extra newsletter a week or I'll give you access to extra content. But then the stress is always on you to create more and more content and is the content good enough?
And so on so that's where I came up with the idea that I already have this community that that does great So why don't I give them access to the community? And a few other perks like getting digital copies of my books that I'm publishing the ones for minimalist hustler And some discounts on on newsletter sponsorships and so on Um so that I just basically started playing around with the price points and the offers in the paid option Maybe Two months ago, three months ago, and, uh, I could say early on it's, it's going really, really well.
And it's actually making me consider moving my whole 8, 000 such subscribers to Substack from ConvertKit, even though I would lose some of the automation and the customization, but the testing is showing me that it might be worth it to get more people one in the community. Can have everything within
Jared: Substack.
Wow. That's fascinating. Um, what is the makeup and price point, uh, of the community and kind of how many people do you have in there? So I have 368
Jamie: people as of when we started recording this podcast, hopefully more now, but, uh, so the price point is now 8 a month or 80 a year. Um, it was 18 a month or 140 a year.
Two, three weeks ago. And I just changed it because, uh, I wanted to see if I could get more people in and it's worked. I think since I changed the price, I've had a dozen new members come in and it's creating a buzz and more engagement and, you know, the community is fun and the way I've got it set up is.
There's not as much pressure than other communities that I've launched. I've launched communities in the past and there's always a pressure on the, the owner of the community to, to, to engage people and get people talking and stuff like that. Whereas I don't have this kind of pressure because, uh, with school, there's like a gamification aspect to it.
And I reward them with different things like consultations, like a newsletter, sponsorships. I run contests and the engagement kind of just happens. Uh, there's a pretty good flow of engagement on its own. So it's, there's, there's, there's no real pressure to it. That's why I call it a minimalist community.
It's, it's done in a way that again, we take the stress away and, you know, have fun with it.
Jared: Now, as part of the newsletter, you have the paid and you have the free one. So I'll ask this question kind of from a high level. You can choose to kind of go at it from both angles or one or the other, but like, where are you finding the biggest growth when it comes to your newsletter size and when it comes to your audience?
So, so
Jamie: growing my newsletter, how I'm getting that the biggest growth for my newsletter. So yeah, until two months ago, it was medium, medium, my number one source of new subscribers. Um, on the regular, it was, you know, a hundred to 200 new subscribers every month without fail for maybe the last two years, um, collaborations go a long way, but they're, they're hit and miss.
So I'll collaborate. For example, Josh Spector, I'll mention my newsletter and I'll get a hundred new subscribers. And then another newsletter that's similar in size will mention my newsletter and I'll get none. So it's You can't base it. It has to be a perfect fit and you don't necessarily know how engaged the audiences are.
But if you find the right newsletter to cross promote with, that's a great way to grow too. Um, I gotta say that since medium is slowed down, sub stack has, has taken over and it's in, I think in the past 30 days, I have something like. Six or 700 new subscribers from sub stack.
Jared: What like just to give listeners, um, you've already done a little bit of this.
So I don't want to, I don't want to suggest you haven't, but For someone who's new to the different email providers, like a convert kit, like a sub stack, just give people like a high level of the differences in sub stack versus convert kit. Because I feel like a lot of people are going to be familiar with both platforms, but maybe not understand the differences and how you're seeing those play out.
You're talking about maybe moving to sub stack, like maybe summarize, bring it together, like what is the big difference in a sub stack versus a convert kit?
Jamie: Yeah. So I think it all comes from where they both started. So, ConvertKit started as an email marketing platform and has slowly transitioned to accommodate newsletters.
Whereas Substack started as a newsletter platform. Um, the thing with ConvertKit, the advantages are, is you have a lot more control on what your individual emails in your newsletter look like. You could segment your audience better based on what they click on or what they choose, where they are, and so many others.
You could add any kind of tags you want if they purchase products. You could send them specific email sequences, and then if they do something, they could go in another sequence, and there's a lot of customizing the newsletter to the recipient, which is at the base of it is email marketing, and while that's appealing to some, it can be a little bit overwhelming to others, um, so Substack, on the other hand, removed Almost all of the automation, all, the only thing they have is an automated welcome email once you sign up.
So, for, on my newsletter on ConvertKit, when people sign up, they get a welcome email, but then the next day they get the best of Vanilla's Hustler. A week later I tell them, happy weekiversary, how are you loving it? A month later I give them a free gift, a year later, and so on. I have it going on, I have it set for 10 years.
Um, nobody's gotten past two yet because I only just passed two years, but to give you an idea, like there's all this automation that Substack, it's, it's not possible, unfortunately, but that says Substack has advantages that ConvertKit doesn't have, the number one being the growth aspect of it. So Substack has, has what's called Substack Notes, which is essentially ex Twitter is, it's, you know, a social network, but within Substack and it's just, it's.
It's much more enjoyable at the moment. I'm not sure it's going to always say that it's, it's pretty new. And there's, there's no like, uh, scheduling tools. And so it's not very high on the list for internet marketers to come in, you know, suck the fun out and just try and push products and affiliate links.
But it's a place where you can grow your newsletter really, really quickly. If you, if you engage and, and not only is it quickly, but it's people that are actually. Interested in you and whatever topic you're writing about, because it's, it's all linked together. So that's the, the real advantage of stack.
So when people come and see me and tell me, Jamie, which one should I start with? I'm like 90 percent of the time it's sub stack, but I, the first question I always ask them is, do you want automation? And most people say, no, I don't, I don't want automation. The people starting out don't want the complicated stuff because you could always add that later.
There's options. There's people that have a newsletter on substack and use convert kit for automations. And, you know, I, like I was doing for a year and a half, I was doing both and I'm still doing both until that, to this day, I'm just, I'm contemplating moving entirely to substack because of the, one, the growth aspect and two, the paid subscription upgrades.
So 90 percent of the time, I'm telling people go with substack, start writing, start engaging on notes. And you're going to have fun because you're going to be choosing a topic that you like. Hopefully that's one big mistake. A lot of people make is they choose subjects that they don't like because they were told that you could only make money if you talk about losing weight or about making money or about gambling or, or so on.
But if you pick a topic that you like, I know people that talk about witchcraft. I know people that talk about, uh, cars, uh, you know, any topic you want, just start writing about it and you can grow on sub stack without needing to go on. Any other
Jared: platform
Jamie: or
Jared: using anything else? You have a number of products.
Um, and again, I'm, I'm leaving books out of this, right? We've talked about that. We can even circle back on it, but aside from the, you know, KDP side of your business, you have, you know, things like challenges and templates and printables. You talked about print on demand briefly. Um, how, uh, how have the product sales gone and how have you chosen which ones to go after and make?
So what's happened again,
Jamie: it's, it's a little bit like the KDP. So especially with the print on demand, the print on demand is almost. 99. 9 percent unrelated to minimalist hustler. I tried to bring some in with some minimalist hustler merch, but right now I'm using that more as, uh, for contests, I'm giving away minimalist hustler, merch, uh, for contests.
For engagement in the community and stuff like that. I'm not promoting to try and sell the merch Uh that could change at some point, but i'm i'm not sure I like giving it away right now It's fun. People seem to love it and and so on but you know, all of that is Outside of millis hustler is still doing pretty well.
Nothing even close to kdp though Um, but when i'm create products now, it's it's always to try and help my core audience through the newsletter Um And even more so through the community. I think the community gives me a better snapshot of who my target audience is. So I'll often hold, you know, votes in there and seeing what I should do next or what I should try, or you guys think I should do this or that and so on.
And I'll often get feedback from there, but at the end of the day, and this is unlike any of the advice I've ever read, uh, from all the, you know, the experts online is I do stuff for me. So. When I write a book that a real book that I'm writing, not like a, a no content one, but a real book, it's something, a topic I enjoy.
And I write it for in a format that's somebody like me would enjoy. Like all my content, even my longer form content is really short. And if it's, if it's long, it's really formatted so that it's easy to skim. It's easy to pick out parts because I don't like long form content, whether it be videos, whether it be podcasts, whether it be.
You know, books, blog posts, I love short form and I'll consume, I'll consume an hour of videos, but they have to be 60 different videos. I won't watch one video that's an hour and in some cases I will, but it's a general rule. So my target audience is basically me and that's, that's how I write because I enjoy writing like that and I know that there are people out there that will enjoy it because There's 8 billion people in the world, so there's bound to be other people like me, and I think just seeing my newsletter audience grow, and seeing my, you know, my followers on Medium grow on Substack, and the community grow, I think it shows that it works.
Jared: Maybe taking a step back here, and kind of looking at your minimalist hustler brand from a high level, who's the typical, like, what's the typical avatar of someone who's on your newsletter, someone who buys your KDP books? Again, the ones targeted at this style, at this, at this avatar, like maybe who is the, the, the, the typical person that you find on your list.
So, so I have a lot of conversations. So one
Jamie: of the, the things I love the most, and I bring a lot of people, especially at the bigger newsletters miss out on this is they don't, they don't talk to the readers. So I'll often encourage in a newsletter issue to, to reply something, and then I'll get a conversation going.
And I mean, it, it, it range in terms of demographic, it, it's really wide ranging, but it's all people that are looking to earn money online. And most of them, it's, they don't have a lot of time. So I get a lot of busy parents. I get a lot of people that have high demand jobs. And I also get a lot of retirees that, that they're coming and they're like, well, I got my pension and it's not as much as I thought or as much as I hoped.
And I, I, I'm trying to find something that I could do. That is not too demanding, but that could, you know, help me supplement my income. So I get a lot of that too. And I mean, the one, the one part where I'd like, you know, they say you need to go after one target audience, but I love helping everybody and one target audience I seem to be missing that I'd like to go after, but I haven't really made any efforts to do it is students.
Students like, you know, starting university and stuff like that. Like I really think, uh, they would take advantage of this and, and be able to, to earn some money in it. And if I look back, if I started when I started in the mid nineties, a newsletter, and even if the topic maybe have changed and things have changed over time, and I kept growing it till today, I can only imagine what, how different it would be.
You know, it's, it's the same as taking somebody like Pat Flynn, for example, and. You know, I remember conversing with him, you know, in the mid 2000s and he was already, you know, pretty well known in the community, in the community. But to what he is today is just a whole, whole different ball game. Right. And it's just long term consistency with what you're doing is it's just a total game changer.
And I have two boys, one's 12 and one's 10. And I I've been trying to, I got them doing some KDP books, some prints on demand, but they, they didn't really have a feel for it. The money to them is not really. That important yet. I think my 12 year old is coming around to it now. And, uh, I'm going to try and see if I can get him started on sub stack, uh, something here.
Jared: Uh, you kind of touched on it. Uh, the type of people that are listening, like for someone listening right now. Who is either struggling with their side hustle efforts or hasn't started one yet. What types of, uh, you know, advice or feedback do you have for those kind of people? I mean, I'm guessing that's the kind of person you're talking to every day on your email list.
But, you know, what are some tangible takeaways maybe that you've learned along the process that will give someone the opportunity or help someone have the opportunity to earn, you know, 500 a month or 1, 000 a month or something that's meaningful from a side hustle they start?
Jamie: Well,
Jared: I mean,
Jamie: there's three things.
There's expectations, there's consistency, and there's, uh, Enjoyment. So those are the three things that I, that come up a lot is you gotta first before anything else What are you expecting? If you're expecting to make 500 a month starting next month Well, nothing that I have for you will likely do that. I mean, it's possible, but it's unlikely.
Usually for those types of people, I'll tell them either. You want to get a gig job in the gig economy, like Uber eats or something like that. Or if you want to do it online, become a freelancer, a ghost writer, something to that, that effect. Um, but even to those people, I tell them that's fine. You need the 500 a month now or whatever it is, go do that.
But at the same time, start thinking about the longterm. You know, because you could start a newsletter with as little as maybe 15 to 30 minutes a week. It really doesn't take much time. But that 15 30 minutes a week is not going to make you 500 a month starting next year or two years. It might take 3, years.
You know, but starting it now, it adds up over time. So, I always preach consistency. So, find the minimum that you can give on a weekly basis. And start with that, whether you still need to go freelance, do nine to five, have your kids to deal with, find a minimum amount of time, start with that and start building.
And oftentimes when you start with that, you'll start seeing some growth. And if you're, if you do the steps that I, you know, lay out for them, which is starting the newsletter on Substack and having a medium blog, usually the, the little bit of money they can make off medium in the first month, Usually gets them excited to keep going because medium is a pretty low bar to start making a little bit of money.
It doesn't scale for much people, but it's, you know, a decent 5, 000 a month pretty easily if you're writing consistently out there. And, and the third thing is, is Don't. Don't do things you don't enjoy unless you need the money again. So I'm not going to tell somebody that I don't like my job. Go quit your job.
You, you need money. There's no, there's no way around it. You need an income. You need to pay the bills. Nobody's telling you to stop that. But at the same time, again, take that minimum amount of time that you could give each week and build something that you enjoy. At the very least, you'll learn something.
You'll, you'll have fun because it's something you enjoy. You might meet people that enjoy the same things that you do. And over time, You can grow it if you really want to and you can monetize it if you really want to I mean and Just as much as the topic is important on what you enjoy how you do it is important, too You know if you don't like being on video don't start doing videos on YouTube if you don't like writing Well, then start doing videos on YouTube or tick tock or whatever It doesn't, you need to find the what you like and also the how you like,
Jared: it's got to go together.
Going forward, like what's next? I feel like for you, you're always, you seem to have your hands in five, 10 things at once. It's probably a hard question to answer, but I guess I'm going back to that initial question I had for you on where Minimalist Hustler is. And, you know, you mentioned that by next year, you'll be cracking the six figure mark.
Like, what are you, what are you focusing on going forward? Um, as this brand expands, I'm guessing some of it has to do with a combination of what you just talked about, what you like, what's working, what's scalable, these sorts of things.
Jamie: Yeah. So one of the things that's, uh, the, the imminent thing is, is I've been myself till September 1st, which I mean, is probably.
Already passed by the time this podcast airs, but that's in four or eight or five days from now and uh, I've given myself till that day to decide if i'm moving to sub stack or not So that's going to play a big decision in what's next um either way I really think the premium paid option with all the perks is something I really want to build out more And I'm also really loving writing minimalist books.
So I've I started a 12 books You In 12 months challenge four months ago. So I've published three books and I'm publishing the fourth one after tomorrow. And I want to continue with that to get through the 12 books. And I think I might even continue after that because I'm in, these are all books that are related to minimalist luster that I could promote to my audience or give away included in the paid subscription.
Jared: That's great. That's great. I mean, you're almost like a, uh, like a, like a human test case for all of us wondering which side hustles to go into and test. Do you care? Test them all for us and tell us how they're going. And we kind of decide which ones we want to grab off the shelf. That was actually
Jamie: a, one of the websites I had back in like maybe 2003 or something like that, and it wasn't called side hustles back then, but it was about making money online and it was just like, here's a key study on this.
And here's a key study on that. And it was just like me trying different things and, you know, documenting it. And it was, it was early on back then, but. You know, imagine if I had started the newsletter on making money back then and what it would be today, it would be a much different ballgame, but you know, you live, you learn, you can't change the past, but you could focus on now and, uh, see where you're going.
Jared: Yep. Yeah. You can't, uh, high size 2020, right. But, uh, doesn't mean you can't, uh, continue working on what you can right now, so. Speaking of where can people follow along with what you're doing? Where's the best place to direct people?
Jamie: So, so the best places is I always tell the people, the same thing, go to minimalist hustler.
com and you just sign up for newsletters, nothing else you can do there. You get there. It's just a simple, there's no scrolling, nothing. It's just really minimalist. You just sign up there and you're going to get a welcome email. And I'm going to tell you in that welcome email, say hi, and I'll, I'll talk to you and we could figure out where you are at, where you want to go, what you want to do.
And if not, you, you're not comfortable. You don't want to, don't want to say hi, just keep seeing the emails. There's going to be so many different things coming through in terms of ways you can make money online, different platforms you could use, you know, help. And, and so on. And, uh, from there, you'll be able to get through to my books, my community, my products, like everything is true there.
Um, so, and like I said, I answer every email and I love it. So if you want, if you want to reach me, just sign up for my newsletter, replies at a welcome email, and you'll be talking to me directly. I, I'm 100 percent solopreneur. I get people that email me all the time to try and delegate stuff. And I, my OCD won't let me delegate anything.
So I am a control freak. So everything that, uh, everything's by
Jared: me when you see anything written online. Well, Jamie, thanks for coming on and sharing. Like I said, I think there's so many things that you talked about that listeners will have either tried or are dabbling in right now, or have figured out how to make it their primary focus, their side hustle, whatever it is.
So. Um, this has been great giving us, uh, kind of a look or a window into so many different ways to earn money online. I feel like we've kind of jumped all over the map in a good way. Um, thank you. Thanks again. Hopefully we'll have, what's that? Go ahead. Very funny. I was just saying thank you for having me.
It was a pleasure to be here.
Jamie: I love talking about this stuff, so I could go on for days.
Jared: I love it. Well, I was just saying, we will have to do a part two down the road, maybe next year, check in on your, uh, on some of your new milestones from the new side houses you're working on, but, uh, thank you again until then have a good one.
Spencer: Hey everyone. Thank you so much for listening to the niche pursuits podcast. I just wanted to remind you that if you are ready to start building smarter, faster, and easier internal links. You should check out Link Whisper. You can get 15 off Link Whisper when you use the coupon code PODCAST at checkout.
Head over to linkwhisper. com and use the code PODCAST in order to save 15. Thanks again for listening.
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