This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Friends, listeners, community. Hey, what's up? Welcome to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau, bringing you a daily episode every single day. That's why it's daily ever since January 1, 2017, all about creating extra income without quitting your job, building financial freedom so that you can do more of what's important to you.
Now today is our Throwback Thursday segment. We're actually gonna hear from someone who's talked about creating passive income to do more of what's important to her. So it's very well aligned. And in this segment, more generally speaking, every week we take an in-depth look at someone whose story has evolved since we first featured them. Now last week we heard from Martin de Reuter in New Zealand.
During lockdown, his handmade jewelry was worn by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern as part of her encouragement to the nation. Today in our latest feature, we'll hear from Kyla Gardner. She's actually living with her partner in Melbourne, Australia. So same part of the world. I believe Kyla is originally from Chicago, but has been living in Australia for a few years now.
She has created passive income from a series of self-published nonfiction books. They're kind of more like guides or handbooks. They're very short books. But because of how Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing works, she's able to earn royalties on lots of different self-published nonfiction books. She'll talk a bit about that in her update.
And as you'll hear, this is a lifestyle business that allows her to do other things like her new hobby, her new hobby, passion, and also side hustle writing fiction. So let's hear more about that directly from Kyla. I'll come back at the end and wrap us up. [Music]
My name is Kyla Gardner and I live in Melbourne, Australia. My side hustle is self-publishing eBooks.
I was featured on episode 1006 of Side Hustle School. I have more than 50 books published now. I've written a lot of them myself, but some of them I have outsourced to other writers. I got started by hearing about Kindle from one of my coworkers who was making money from it. At the time, I worked in customer service for a software company that helps people sell physical products on Amazon.
Before that, I worked as a journalist. So Kindle made sense as a combination of those two areas. I knew about researching and writing quickly from journalism. And then I learned all about Amazon selling and Amazon SEO from my customer service job. So publishing books on Amazon made sense for me as a side hustle.
My first couple of books took me about six months to write and publish. And it took about a year before I was making a full-time income from my business. These nonfiction books are my main source of income, but I wouldn't say I'm hustling on them day to day. It's become more of a passive income that's allowed me to work on my next side hustle, which is self-publishing fiction books. In terms of side hustles, I know they both of course sound very similar, nonfiction or fiction, but within publishing, they are very different.
Since I was featured on the show in 2019, I haven't published any more nonfiction books. That side of my business is almost entirely passive income now. In my episode, my income was quoted at 3,500 to 7,000 a month in profit. My income doesn't fluctuate that high anymore. It's more towards the lower end of that range, but it is more consistent month to month.
Now I see my nonfiction books as a lifestyle business that allows me to pivot to new genres that I'm more interested in. I love to read domestic suspense and psychological thrillers. So that's what I'm writing now. I have a new pen name and my most recent book was about a murder within an MLM or multi-level marketing scheme. The biggest challenge I'm facing at the moment is patience in my business.
In the past, I've loved working on deadline and moving super fast, writing nonfiction how-to guides that were only 50 to 75 pages long. So I could research and write one of those in a couple of weeks. Writing a 200 to 300 page novel takes me a lot more time. And this form of storytelling is a skill I'm still developing versus being comfortable with writing nonfiction. But I love that challenge and feeling like I'm growing every day.
I hope one day my fiction will become as profitable as my nonfiction books, but I know that so far it's been a slower build and I'm just gonna have to keep working at it. If you're looking for your own side hustle, look at what you already have going for you. Kindle made sense for me with my work experience as a journalist and the Amazon related software company. So it was a natural fit, but it may not be that perfect fit for everyone. If someone has writing experience or SEO experience, maybe that's a great fit.
But at the end of the day, you're going to have trouble just trying to replicate someone else's success. I've learned that myself even within self-publishing that I've had to write about topics or in genres that are interesting to me. So you have to make your side hustle your own. If people do wanna check out some of my fiction, they can find that under my pen name, Kyla Sharp. [Music]
Big thanks to Kyla for sharing her updates with us.
Listeners, if you wanna check out her website, learn more about what she's up to, kylagardener.com or on Goodreads as Kyla Gardner, G-A-R-D-N-E-R. Also, as you just heard from her, her pen name for the new fiction she's working on is Kyla Sharp. So you can find that on Amazon. The new book is called "The Lies We Sold," which is very appropriate for fiction since everything to do with multilevel marketing is already made up, right? The whole industry of multilevel marketing is fiction, so appropriate to write a novel about it.
The description for that book says, "She's caught in an MLM pyramid scheme. Now her first customer is dead." Dun, dun, dun. Anyway, check that out on Amazon. Let me know what you think and who you'd like to see featured from our archives of more than 1,000 stories. If you've got a question, an update for us about your side hustle, whatever's on your mind, let me know, sidehustleschool.com/questions, or of course, say hi on social media.
The show notes for today, specifically, sidehustleschool.com/17621762. Thanks for tuning in. Hope you'll come back tomorrow. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the "Onward Project."
