Nick Loper is my guest today. Nick is the owner and CEO of Side Hustle Nation. He’s on today to share proven strategies for using your book as a lead generator rather than a revenue source. 

Nick's philosophy is simple: most authors will find greater value using their book as a business card and authority builder. He demonstrates this at local vendor fairs where his stack of books carries more weight than his podcast's 30 million downloads. 

Nick views Amazon as a top-five search engine and if you can show up through strategic titles and keywords, your book becomes a powerful point of discovery at the top of your funnel. The key is integrating compelling calls-to-action throughout your content. For those just starting, Nick suggests creating quick-start checklists, 30-day implementation guides, or curated lists of tools and resources, bonus points if you can repurpose content.

The game-changer in Nick's strategy is his permafree book approach, which has driven over 150,000 free downloads since 2019. While he can't track exact conversions, he's confident these 150,000 readers have become podcast listeners, Facebook group members, and email subscribers.

Nick's permafree strategy is fundamentally a search play on Amazon. When potential readers search Amazon and find competing books alongside Nick's free option, they naturally choose the low-friction entry point, capturing them before competitors do. His approach evolved significantly over the years, with his biggest growth coming when he started offering text summaries of podcast episodes as lead magnets. This simple shift took his email list from 1,000 subscribers to 12,000 within a year, creating a content marketing arm for the business he wanted to build.

Ready to write your authority-building book? Schedule a discovery call and take the next step to moving one step closer to writing and publishing your book!

Until next time, keep writing, dreaming, and creating—your book is waiting to be born!

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100 Ways to Make $1000: How Real People Make Real Money on the Side (and how you can too)

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LYNN: Hey friends and future authors, it's Lynn Liquity Smarges, ghostwriter and book editor here at Write For You. Thanks for listening into today's episode. A big welcome back to my returning listeners, and another big thank you for joining me again and a welcome to my new listeners. I'm so glad that you stopped by to check out my podcast. Please make sure to hit the follow button wherever you're listening or watching to this podcast to get professional writing and publishing information dropped straight to your podcast player every week.

I have an incredible conversation lined up for you today my friends. I've got another fabulous guest expert interview and I am joined today by Nick Loper. He is the owner and CEO of Side Hustle Nation. He set out to create the podcast he wanted to listen to, light on theory, heavy on tactics. A majority of people are tied to jobs they don't love and starting a side hustle is a realistic way to build an alternative path to financial independence. It's super rewarding to share the hundreds of creative ways people have found to make money, extra money, and to start a business in their spare time. And Nick is with us today to share how to use your book on Amazon as a lead generator, which is really important and one of the things I talk about a lot on my Substack. He's going to discuss how you can apply this process when you are marketing your business. This episode is going to provide some awesome wisdom you've been searching for. So Nick, thank you so much for joining me today on Publishing for Professionals.

NICK: You bet, thanks for having me.

LYNN: I'm super excited to have you here because we met at FinCon and you did such a fabulous presentation workshop on your Side Hustle information. I believe that one was more geared towards email marketing, but today we're going to talk about using your book as a lead generator because a lot of my clients who I have for ghostwriting, their main purpose for ghostwriting their book is to use their book as a business card or a lead generator. So I'm really excited to have you on to talk about this today.

Let's jump in and talk about what are some general ways that you have used a book as a lead generator for your business, for either Side Hustle Nation or another business that you've had?

NICK: Yeah, so it sounds like your audience already knows that unless you're writing the next "Atomic Habits" or the next "Subtle Art," the idea of making royalties off your book is fantastic, but for most people it is probably more likely to be like you said, that business card, that authority builder, that point of discovery where if people are going to see that you have the book, it elevates your status a little bit.

It's funny, we did a vendor fair in our local neighborhood this summer and I had this little sign. I'm trying to get more listeners for the podcast so I have this little banner made up and it's like 700 episodes, however many five star reviews, 30 something million downloads. And then I have this stack of books on the side of the table and people are like, oh I didn't know you had a book. I promise you the 30 million downloads was way harder than writing this book, but it still holds this little cache, this little bit of authority builder.

So the way I look at it, I look at Amazon as another search engine, probably a top five search engine in the world, where people are looking for the information that you have to share and they're typing in those keywords into Amazon looking for content, looking for books about that topic. And if you can show up there through your own, through your title, through your keywords, through your marketing efforts, through the reviews on your book, all of a sudden they're more likely to find your book, read the book, take action, apply what you said. And then there's always, especially in the world of business books and non-fiction, it's like, do you want to take the next step or could we help you with it? There's always that call to action of like the bonus material.

So that's kind of how I look at it where the book is a point of discovery, top of the funnel, and there's always an invitation to come on in, listen to the show, join the email list, join the Facebook community, grab your free bonus offer, stuff like that. Does that make sense?

LYNN: Yeah, no, that totally makes sense. And I love that because using your book, selling it on Amazon, and that's a lot of focus of a lot of my clients. They're not looking to make a million dollars with their book. I mean, obviously some people want to. I had another guest on my show earlier last year and she talked about how she wants to be more well known in the fiction genre. But every author has their own different perspective on what they want to do. But yeah, a lot of my clients are just looking for that lead magnet and that totally makes sense because you want to show up when people are looking for business help books. If you're in the real estate business or whatever it is in that section in Amazon, that makes a lot of sense.

Now I know you can use, one of the things I talk about to my clients a lot is using the first few pages to have a QR code to download a lead magnet. And I know you have used that in your books. So can you talk a little bit more about how you have used the first few pages of your Amazon preview to get as a lead generator for your business as well?

NICK: Yeah, the QR code is probably a good idea. I just have text links or a clickable link on the Kindle version. But for the paperback especially, the QR code would be a good way to go, make it even lower lift. But to your point, Amazon has the look inside preview or the read a sample button where sometimes people don't even need to buy the book to become a part of your email list if they're scrolling through and you have a compelling enough offer in those first few pages. Hey, grab your bonus or grab the companion guide or something like that. We've done that a handful of times, make sure it's visible at the very front of the book, and I make a point to intersperse it as it makes sense throughout the content as well.

And you see this really commonly in nonfiction where it's like, hey, make sure to grab the companion toolkit. Almost every chapter they're kind of referencing this where if you're serious about this, it's going to be hard to get all the way through without opting in for more of what the author has to offer.

LYNN: Right, right. Yeah. And the main point obviously of all of these things we're talking about is to get people on your email list, because the email list is the gold standard of marketing, even today. It doesn't matter how many social media channels are going to pop up in the next 10 years, email marketing, you've got the full attention of the person that you're speaking to. So that's really important.

And so what type of lead magnets do you commonly use for lead generators? Do you use ebooks? Do you use checklists? What are some of the ones that you have found in your niche business and avatar that have been most effective?

NICK: So it's somewhat context dependent on what the reader is reading about, but I'll give you a few examples. So one of the earlier books that I did was called "Buy Buttons." This was my first, or one of my first, really concerted self-publishing efforts and the whole marketing push behind it. And it is a collection of marketplaces, the theory being like, look, I'm trying to start something new on the side, go where the cash is already flowing. Here are all of these, I call them buy buttons, marketplaces where it's relatively simple to put your product or service up for sale where people are already looking for it. Make it easy for them to find you and buy your thing.

And so the bonus for that, because it's kind of broken down into categories is like, okay, here's a bunch of sign-up bonuses for those various services that we compiled. Like any $20 off your first thing if you want to try it. There are some companion guides on freelancing and consulting, some on online teaching, some related to e-commerce. And it's kind of a choose your own adventure type of book where it's like, I may not be interested in all of those, but hopefully one of them is. And in that case it was content that already existed, but it was buried in a podcast interview from a year and a half ago. And so it's kind of a matter of repurposing that and structuring it so it would be a lead magnet for that book.

In the Side Hustle book, which is the permafree book on Amazon, we'll talk about that in a little bit, it's a little bit broader because this is kind of just very entry point, top of the funnel type of stuff. The generic lead magnet that I've had on the site for years and years is the Five Fastest Ways to Make Extra Money. So I plugged that in the beginning, invite people to subscribe to the podcast because at the end of most podcast episodes there's another call to action, there's an email opt-in invite at the end of most episodes. And it also invites people to join the free Facebook community, which is like, hey, if you're not ready for those other things, maybe this is the channel that you would like to come and hang out in. We got 50,000 members, it's a very supportive community. And when you request to join, one of the questions is, do you want to get our best stuff by email? Some people say yes, some people say no, but it's another touch point.

LYNN: So would you say, because I know you had mentioned earlier, obviously depending on what you're trying to sell, there's different lead magnets that are better than others. Is there a type of lead magnet, like a checklist or something, that if someone's brand new starting out on this and they want to try out something but they don't want to invest a ton of time and money into it because it's their first one and they're kind of looking for data to see what works, do you feel like there's a type of lead magnet that is good for that, like a checklist because it's easier? Or do you feel like it really is more specific to the type of content that you're putting out on what type of lead magnet you might want to start out with first, even if you are just newly experimenting with this?

NICK: Yeah, if you could build the quick start checklist or the 30-day implementation guide of whatever the book is talking about, or even if it's a somewhat technical, like the list of tools and resources that I like, whereby, and even you could probably affiliate link those down the road if you have them. But something low lift just to test out, and bonus points if it's something that you'd already created in another form or for a different purpose. Like swing that over now to be the book lead magnet.

LYNN: Nice. And then, I know there's a ton of metrics you can look at for how well your lead magnet's doing, but what are the ones that you really focus on, Nick, that you have found, okay, if I look at this data and I can move this needle, it really improves your ROI?

NICK: I'm so bad at this. I don't do anything. I just set it and forget it and I'm on to the next thing. But some people are really dialed in. Oh, I was able to eke out another 5% conversion rate on this landing page. I really don't do a ton of that. Just put it up and the metric for me is just subscribers. So net subscriber gain at the end of the month. There's definitely people far more sophisticated.

LYNN: So have you noticed that certain types of lead magnets have done better and have gotten you more email people coming in than others? Or is it more of just this topic really resonated with people and this did really well?

NICK: Yeah, so what worked really well for me has definitely evolved over time. Like 10, 12 years ago it was kind of text summaries of the podcast. And I would pitch it, this is unrelated to the book or unrelated to self-publishing, but I would pitch it on air thinking, you're out walking the dog, you're at the gym, you're driving in the car, you're not in a great place to take notes. But meanwhile my guest is dropping all kinds of juicy knowledge and you'd like to refer back to that without having to listen to the whole thing again. Don't worry, we took notes for you. You can go to sidehustlenation.com/whatever and download the free PDF. We called it the highlight reel for this episode.

And that was really a big turning point for the business because I had been toiling away probably a year, 14 months at that point, and then scratched and clawed my way to like a thousand subscribers. But within three months of starting to do that it was 3,000. Within six months it was 6,000. Within 12 months it was 12,000. It was like a big kind of, the closest thing I've ever seen to like a hockey stick growth kind of moment, even though it was still kind of stretched out over the course of the next year. But it was kind of this recognition that the show itself, in my case at that point, is not a business in itself. It is a content marketing arm for the eventual business that you want to create, that you want to build. And so starting to treat it as such was a really important move.

LYNN: So that's really interesting. So you had people sign up on your email list and then they would just get every week's show notes, basically a PDF summary dropped right to their inbox?

NICK: Right. And today we typically just publish that on the site for people who prefer reading, and it hasn't really impacted listenership in a negative way. My theory was okay, maybe it's going to be better for the SEO visibility of the website. That hasn't necessarily played out as well. It just takes, probably a better user experience instead of having to get more creative with other kind of complimentary lead magnets. Like, oh, you just listened to an episode about renting out mobility scooters for people traveling into town. If you like this model but maybe you're not into mobility scooters, hey, I made a list of 20 other unconventional assets you could rent out for a profit. Download that, that's a free listener bonus for this week.

So those types of lists or brainstormings or kind of maybe even a little bit of research. We did an episode on building directory websites earlier in the year, and so I pulled up my Ahrefs account and did some filtering and like, well, here's a hundred potential directory niches that might be worth exploring further. That's your listener bonus for this episode. So trying to think for somebody listening, what's the logical next step? What would be helpful for them? And kind of presenting that as the opt-in offer.

LYNN: Got it. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. All right, my friends, we're going to take a quick break right here. But when we come back, I'm super excited to talk to Nick about how you can use a permafree book on Amazon to pull people into the top of your funnel. So hang tight and we'll be back with Nick in just a minute.

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All right, I'm back with Nick Loper, who is the CEO and owner of Side Hustle Nation, and he is giving us some fabulous and fantastic information on how to use your book as a lead magnet and how to do some lead magnet marketing, lead generation marketing using lead magnets, if that wasn't a mouthful.

All right, so before the break we talked about some different ways that Nick has used lead magnets to market his business, including using books and other marketing materials. But for the last half of this interview, Nick, I would love to chat about permafree on Amazon because first of all, I didn't know permafree was an option. So let's talk about what is a permafree book on Amazon and how do you set that up? Let's chat about that first because that's one that is new to me.

NICK: Yeah, this was introduced to me from the world of fiction authors where they're going to write a series of titles and they want to make the first title free to get people into the series. It's like a low friction way to do it. And I was like, well, what's the non-fiction version of that? It's probably similar to what we're talking about where this is just an authority builder. This is a low friction way to get people into my world.

Amazon, when you go to upload your book through Kindle Direct Publishing, you'll notice the free is not an option right there. I think they'll give you a 35% royalty if you click 99 cents as their minimum price, but they really squeeze people in between $2.99 to $9.99 because they're like, well, we'll double your royalty if you're in there. Like we're gonna force the market to say this is what an ebook costs, this is what a Kindle book costs.

What I found, and what this fiction author was explaining, was they don't have a formal price match policy, but what you can do is go in through KDP support. So you want to upload your book to another platform. At the time that I published it was like Apple iBooks or maybe Google Play, Android's bookstore or something, maybe even Smashwords, I'm not sure. But upload the same title, the same work to another platform that does allow you to set it for free. And then you can send Amazon support and be like, hey, check it out, this is the same title, it's for free over here. Would you consider a price match? Sometimes they'll say yes, sometimes they'll say no. Sometimes you gotta wait a couple months, try it again. But in my case they said yes.

LYNN: Oh, that's amazing. And so you first have to upload your book to another platform and then set it up for free and be like, hey Amazon, do you want to price match my book for free because this other one is doing it?

NICK: Because Amazon never wants to miss out on anything.

LYNN: And I think that's probably why they pushed that number up to $2.99 that they want you to publish your ebook at. Now obviously you're not offering this book as a paperback, it's just an ebook, because you can't offer a free paperback because that would be costing you a lot of money and it wouldn't make sense. But most people read ebook so it's very easy for someone just to download an ebook off of Amazon to get it for free. And like you said, yeah, 99 cents isn't a lot but it's money, so compared to free and money, there's a difference.

So have you found that when people read that book, what are people's next steps when they read that book? Are they immediately calling you to find out more about Side Hustle Nation? Are more of them taking a next step like, hey, I'm going to jump on your website and see what else there is for free? Because the other piece that I'm wondering about is I know when people get things for free they're usually looking for more free information. They're not necessarily looking for something paid. So where are people's typical next step?

NICK: Yeah, that's a good argument as well. And we definitely have heard from people where it's like, I'm not giving anything away for free, it just attracts the freebie seekers. I want people who are really ready to open their wallet. And that's totally fine. I'm kind of in the content and media business where the content is the product in a lot of cases, so I'm okay with free.

The other interesting thing is I would absolutely upload the paperback version and stick a price tag on it, $9.99, $14.99, because it now makes the perceived value of the free thing even higher. And surprisingly, people will buy the paperback version. It's generated $3,500 bucks or something in royalties and over a thousand sales of the paperback version. So people still do buy it. I created the audiobook version as well. Like meet people where they're at, give them the format they want to consume the information in, and it all still is going to have the same content, the same calls to action and stuff in there.

LYNN: Interesting. And so when you decided to do the permafree book, what specific aspect of your business were you marketing? Obviously Side Hustle Nation, so you're looking to bring people into your email list and to sell them. So what was the next step? So that's the top of your funnel. So what was your next funnel step after people would download the free book?

NICK: Yeah, it really is choose your own adventure after that. I would hope that you become a loyal listener of the podcast. Obviously I hope every listener tells five friends about it and that's kind of the game, was just trying to expand the universe of awareness and get people deeper into the content and hopefully the word of mouth starts to spread.

But really this one was a pure search play on Amazon where it has side hustle in the title. It's one of these major search engines where the Google algorithm is endlessly complex, and that would be fantastic to rank on the first page for that really high volume keyword. But barring that, what other little mini search engines or smaller search engines could I go after that same keyword for? And Amazon is definitely one of those where if you can work those keywords into your title and people find that, they might find another side hustle book that's $15 and they look at this one that's free and they say, well, let me roll the dice with this free one first and see if I like it.

LYNN: That's exactly what I was thinking in my head when you said that. It's like, I'll try the free one first and if the free one doesn't work, I'll buy the $15 one.

NICK: Yeah, yeah. That's the easiest one. That's the lowest bar is to just pull in the free one.

LYNN: Yeah. And like you said, I think that's an important thing to consider for people who don't want to offer free things. Okay, but your free book might outwin or might beat, if someone's looking at your competitors' book for $10, but then they can get your book for free, your ebook for free, they might be like, oh, well, let me try Nick's free ebook first because I don't have to make an investment in that. And then you've captured that person before your competition. And I didn't know, did that have anything to play in when you were thinking about your permafree book?

NICK: Yeah, it's kind of, we're just trying to make it as low friction as possible. We're just thinking of it as a 30,000 word blog post in a way, where this information in a lot of cases was already out there because it was pulling from the hundreds of Side Hustle Show interviews. It wasn't, yes, there were some new elements to the book, new content that was created or restructuring or reformatting it, but a lot of it was already out there in some form. It was kind of a matter of molding it, massaging it into a book form.

LYNN: Yeah, like organizing it into a book form. Because actually several of my clients I've ghostwritten for have had a podcast and that's exactly what we've done is just literally take their podcast information and organize it into succinct content for a book, which is a really fabulous way to make a book and is really a lot easier for my clients because you already have a lot of information out there from blogs and podcast content and things like that.

Nick, this has been super fabulous. I am loving all of the valuable information you have shared with us today on Publishing for Professionals. So I know some of my listeners are definitely going to want to reach out and get ahold of you. For people on audio, you can visit Nick at Side Hustle Nation. So Nick, I'm going to let you take it away and tell people where they can find you and reach out to you for a free gift that you are offering listeners to Publishing for Professionals.

NICK: Yeah, I mean, this is just fun stuff. I'm geeking out on marketing all day long. I think this is great. My latest title is called "One Thousand Dollars One Hundred Ways." I'd love to give your listeners a free copy. So sidehustlenation.com/right4u is where you'll be able to claim a free digital copy of that book, "One Thousand Dollars One Hundred Ways."

LYNN: Awesome, sounds great. Well Nick, thank you so much for coming on today and sharing all this valuable information. I know that people are gonna have at least one takeaway from this, maybe two, and I know I've got a few that I've written down in my book that I am going to try to implement for my marketing piece. And this is just really fabulous ways to use your book as a lead generator. So thank you so much for coming on today and sharing this.

NICK: Awesome, thank you.

LYNN: All right, my friends, so remember, you know I love working with new clients, just as we talked about earlier, working with new and repeat authors to write and edit their nonfiction books. So instead of using your time to write your book, give me a call and I can write your book for you and you can work on what you do best, and that's being a thought leader. Until next week, this is Lynn Liquity Smarges reminding you to keep writing, keep dreaming, and keep creating. Your book is waiting to be born.

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