SHP #11: A Little More Focus, I Guess
To be fair, though, it was easy to improve on the previous week!
I've admitted that I have a problem. I hoard side hustles.
After admitting this to myself I realized three possible ways to work with this:
Do nothing and watch them go nowhere.
Get rid of a few of them to concentrate on the ones that are working.
Find some way to make all of them work together as one giant happy family.
Just as a review, this is what I've accumulated over the years:
Several websites spanning personal finance, online presence, coin collecting, making money online, and weight loss
A number of domains
130+ stories on Medium
Followings on several social media sites
Two YouTube channels, neither monetized
Pinterest boards
Several Facebook groups, one with nearly 23k members
A mailing list of 300+ wonderful subscribers
Two newsletters (one daily, one weekly)
A website design and maintenance client
A reselling presence on eBay
Accounts with sporadic affiliate or referral income
And a piano student with leads on others
A few dozen musical arrangements and compositions
The boldface pieces are what I'm focusing on now, mainly around the currency collecting community I've built.
Adjusting my focus is taking a while
Focusing on fewer things is helping. Some stress went away. Perhaps a bit too much, as things got crammed into the latter part of the week … again.
Part of this is that I've not scheduled my work to be done throughout the week, and I didn't refer to the list I made up in last week's newsletter until later in the week.
One of my first actions Sunday will be to set up my work for the week in Todoist -- maybe also my calendar -- and refer to that more diligently than I have been.
Learn from one Side Hustler's Progress. Here we go!
1. Monetizing a YouTube channel: Up to 100 videos!
I posted two regular videos and two shorts to my Cool Serial YouTube channel.
This makes one hundred videos on the channel. Some statistics as I pass this milestone:
61 regular videos and 39 shorts
812 subscribers
134k views and 4.4k watch hours (lifetime)
Most views on one regular video is 14k
19 regular videos and 22 shorts published in 2025 (41% of total)
(And now that I have 100 videos, I'll book my call with MrBeast because he said that once I get my 101st video out then "we can talk" 🤣)
Added a call to action to a bunch of regular videos
I have an ebook on Fancy Serial Numbers for Fun and Profit that sold a few dozen copies a number of years ago. I had a sales plugin on my site that started to malfunction, so the sales had gone away for a while.
I set out last week to add a call to action to a number of my videos. Thankfully, it was very easy to do this. I could add text at the end of the existing descriptions all at once with a bulk edit in YouTube Studio.
I'll see over the coming weeks how well my CTA works. I have a special tracking URL that records all of the clicks.
Cross-promoted bill hunt series on Facebook group
This was another action from Jamie Northrup during our call. He recommended that I "not be shy" about promoting my videos on the Facebook group.
To that end, I sent a message to "@everyone" about the bill hunt video series I have for this month.
For the coming week: Two more videos and two more shorts.
2. Solid Cash Tips newsletter: One sequence is live
I use Kit (formerly ConvertKit) to manage my minimalist Solid Cash Tips newsletter.
Issues 142 to 147 went out each weekday morning and Saturday at 8:40.
Here they are if you're interested.
Finished my welcome sequence and it's live
I now have a six-email welcome sequence that's live for a limited number of new subscribers to Solid Cash Tips. People who subscribe through Kit's Creator Network will be the ones that get it.
I'm rolling it out slowly because people join my list for a number of different reasons. The ones that join from the Creator Network are likely the ones who will resonate most with the sequence. My serial number people … probably not so much.
I'm getting to wonder if I'm missing the mark with my emails. One got absolutely no clicks whatsoever. I usually get a least a few. So I'm sensitive to just sending out emails indiscriminately.
I do have a small number of emails drafted for the currency collecting folks. Getting that set up will be my next order of business. Also, I need to organize and streamline my sign-up forms a bit, and capture who goes in what segment, and who gets what sequence. This will also mean giving people options for opting-out of the pieces they don't want as much. This will help retention.
For the coming week: Get out an issue every weekday again and Saturday. Edit the footer links to become more engaging (2nd try). Start up sequence for the serial number people.
3. Creating long-form content: Just one post -- but I created a Medium publication
I got one long-form article out this week. I had planned for three.
Medium publication is up
I created a Medium publication centered around side hustles, called Side Hustle Progress (see what I did there?)
I noticed that Christina Piccoli had a Smart Finances publication for her money content. She's the sole author there. People follow that publication just on its own. (She could open it to other authors if she wanted, which would increase her exposure there.) I figured a publication could be a way to keep the side hustle content coming and perhaps increase the engagement there.
For the coming week: Get out three long-form pieces.
Continue with the calls to action!
In our newsletter session, Jamie brought up the flywheel concept.
This means using one asset to promote another:
Newsletter subscribers are led to check out YouTube videos as well as the Facebook group.
Community posts give people links to watch the YouTube videos, and to subscribe to the newsletter.
YouTube videos have links to the community in their descriptions, or offer to sign up for the newsletter, or offer to buy an ebook.
I did this on some YouTube videos, and in the Facebook group.
For the coming week: I'll add calls to action to more YouTube videos, and create a template I can use to add them to the new videos (2nd try).
Summary of how I did, and what I'm going to do
This was a better week for follow-through, though to be fair improving on the previous week was easy!
I'll put up at least two regular videos and two shorts on the YouTube channel. That will get me to 100 videos! (DONE)
Get out an issue of Solid Cash Tips every weekday and Saturday. (DONE)
Edit the footer links in the newsletter to become more engaging. (NOT DONE)
Start up sequences for everyone on the list, and for the serial number people. (HALF-DONE)
Get out three long-form pieces (four for bonus points). Stand up a sied-hustle-themed Medium publication. (PARTIALLY DONE)
Add calls to action to (say 20) existing YouTube videos. (DONE)
Create a template I can use to add CTAs to the new videos. (NOT DONE)
Promote the bill hunt series in my Facebook group. (DONE)
For the coming week, here's what I'll focus on:
Set up my work for the week in Todoist (maybe also my calendar) by Sunday. Refer to it throughout the week.
Post two more YouTube videos and two more shorts.
Get out an issue of Solid Cash Tips every weekday again and Saturday.
Edit the footer links to become more engaging (2nd try).
Complete a start-up sequence for the currency-collecting segment.
Get out three long-form articles.
Add calls to action to more YouTube videos, and create a template I can use to add them to the new videos (2nd try).
What other things would you like to hear about? Let me know in the comments!
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