What to Expect from The Step Ladder Hustle Newsletter
What to Expect from The Step Ladder Hustle Newsletter
Hi I’m Jason,
Since 2007, I've been side-hustling—not for great profit, but to gain invaluable experience that’s shaped my approach.
The limited money I’ve made is mainly due to not focusing on one thing, lacking consistency, and not always selling at the right price. These key lessons will become clearer as I share my journey.
I got bitten by the bug of side hustles before the term was even coined.
I was writing articles, like hundreds of others, on a website called Hubpages (now known as a content farm), where one’s links for Google Adsense and Amazon would make you money when a reader would click an ad on your article.
It was pretty simple. You write an article on a single formatted page. Hubpages placed ads on your article. You got a 70/30 rev share with you taking 70%.
When visiting my cousin in Sydney. I showed him my AdSense one day just to show him I expected to see zero dollars.
AU$5.41 was sitting in my AdSense. I made this money when I was in the air flying from Melbourne to Sydney. By (what I felt at the time was) doing nothing. I was floored.
Someone clicked a link on my article, and I made 70% from AU$7.71.
My first income was from simply writing articles.
Over the next few months, I started to earn enough, around AU$50 a month, to pay for my internet and buy the occasional coffee.
But the Panda update in 2008 crashed all of these content farms, so my income also crashed……
To show the breadth of my journey, here’s an overview of my Side Hustle Resume—a summary that reflects how I’ve balanced work, family, and various projects over the years.
Why this newsletter and why now?
This brings me to today. Several years ago, I listened to Nick Loper’s podcast — The Side Hustle Nation - episode: The Side Hustle Snowball: How to “Erase” Your Expenses with Extra Income Stream
After listening to this podcast episode and re-listening to it over a couple of years, a theme started in my head.
What if a ‘framework’ could be built out of this, not just matching hustler's income to steps on paying bills, like a step ladder, but a larger framework of talking steps from a beginner hustler to earning their first $100, to stepping into larger income sources through providing higher income services or digital products.
What I’ll share here
I will look at proving one clear theme per week (Step Ladder Hustle ideas, digital products, ecosystem thinking). I do this with practical tips, behind-the-scenes experiments, lessons from my own projects, and provide curated insights. I will also I’ll keep each issue short, punchy, and actionable. No fluff, no overwhelm.
Why it matters to you
This isn’t generic hustle advice. I want to be a resource for providing benefits on helping others build real digital assets, or excellent provision of services and stop trading time for money, and climb their income step by step.
What to expect going forward
I'll be looking to write posts here weekly and have practical, no-BS advice, with a little inspiration.
Call to action
If you or you know a friend who’s starting a side hustle, forward this to them and they can follow along.