714: My 2025 Progress Report: What Worked, What Didn’t, and What’s Next?

The Side Hustle Show

Nick Loper

How To, Entrepreneurship, Business, Education

4.7 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 25 December 2025

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What's working, what's not, and where Side Hustle Nation is headed next? I'm pulling back the curtain on my 2025 annual progress report, sharing insights from a year of podcasting, YouTube experiments, business challenges, and personal growth. Tune in to Episode 714 of the Side Hustle Show to learn: what's working (and what's not) in podcast and YouTube monetization how AI is streamlining content production lessons from a year of health experiments and personal reading Full Show Notes: My 2025 Progress Report: What Worked, What Didn’t, and What’s Next? 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.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's progress report time. A look inside the last year of Side Hustle Nation projects,
0:06.7	experiments, successes, failures, tools, tactics, travels, and trials. I'm your host, Nick Loper,
0:12.2	wishing you a very Merry Christmas and a happy new year. Let's start with the podcast. The
0:16.7	Side Hustle Show has been a bright spot for me this year. We crossed 700 episodes, maintained the six episodes a month publishing calendar that started as an experiment last year.
0:27.5	As you probably heard, the ad sales network, Yap Media, Young and Profiting, has done a bang-up job of selling out all the available inventory and then some.
0:37.2	And in a year where the website income
0:39.9	from affiliate partnerships and display ad revenue was down pretty significantly, I was really
0:44.9	grateful for that. So to give a sense of scale for the show in the name of transparency,
0:50.5	the show is reaching around 220, 230,000 downloads a month or an estimated 100,000
0:56.9	unique devices, which is an approximation of audience size, which is kind of crazy. Imagine
1:02.6	standing at the 50-yard line in front of a stadium of 100,000 people. It's pretty nerve-wracking.
1:09.1	And it's also a responsibility that I don't take lightly,
1:13.3	like trying to source compelling and legit side hustle stories and pulling out helpful insights
1:19.9	and advice from guests and from the hundreds of hours of audio in the archives too. So there have
1:24.2	been a few minor changes on the production side this year. So I'm still
1:27.5	using Riverside to record all the remote interviews and then I mark up the transcript with sections
1:33.3	to trim for the editor. Hey, where did this go off the rails or what, you know, which questions just
1:38.1	didn't really land. And what has changed is, first of all, the input. So I got a new mic a couple
1:44.1	months ago, this fancy sure SM of all, the input. So I got a new mic a couple months ago, this fancy
1:45.3	sure SM7DB, I think. That was a switch from the high LPR 40 that had powered the show for
1:52.9	the previous 400 episodes. I don't know if you can tell the difference, but it was advertised
1:56.3	as being better at cutting out background noise and room reverb and all that.
	...

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