Foreign.

You're listening to the Master Passive Income Podcast Network.

Welcome to the Master Passive Income show.

My name is Dustin Heiner, and I'm here to help you quit that job, that just overbroked job, by investing in real estate so you never, ever have to work a job again.

And in today's show, I am super pumped to bring on a friend of mine who utilizes Etsy to sell products that that makes him a lot of money.

And then he parks that money or puts it into real estate that makes him so much money that now he's financially independent, travels the world, like literally travels the world with his wife.

And he's going to show us how he did it and how you can do it as well.

All right, let's start the show.

Welcome to the Master Passive Income podcast where we talk about investing in real estate with a special focus on making enough money so you can quit your job and live the dream life.

And now, here is your host, Dustin Heiner.

What's up?

What's up?

Super blessed as always to have you.

Here with me on the show.

And we are fresh off of the Real Estate Wealth Builders Conference.

We had the Real Estate Wealth Builders Conference.

This is our fourth year now doing it.

And I told you a couple weeks ago that the Real Estate Wealth Builders Conference is changing or it's going away.

We're not doing anymore.

Well, we are changing it now.

In a couple of weeks, I'm going to unveil exactly everything that's going on that's not this episode.

But this episode is all about helping you to make more money to invest in real estate so that you can have financial freedom.

Because when you buy real estate, you make money six different ways.

Equity capture, you buy it less than it's worth.

Passive income, you make money over the amount of your expenses are because that's in a form of rents.

You also have market appreciation, where just over time, over every 15 years, the market, real estate market doubles every 15 years.

Forced appreciation, you fix it up, you make it worth more than it's currently worth by how much you put money into it.

Just like fixing and flipping a house.

You also get the mortgage buy down where the tenants pay off your mortgage.

This is so amazing.

And on top of that, you get so many tax advantages as a real estate investor.

But when you make money from your job or if you have a side hustle, or if you have something like a business that makes you money, like my friend that I'm bringing on today, we met back in 2020, like right before COVID hit in February.

We were skiing in Tahoe and as we were talking, he was wanting to start investing in real estate.

And I was walking him through exactly how I do it, how I coach people and everything.

And fast forward now, he's done so well.

He utilizes Etsy to make a lot of money.

And that's the number one reason why I bring him on the show.

So he could show you how you can also make a lot of money from Etsy.

But then, just like he did, I want you to do it as well.

Take that money that you make from Etsy, put it into real estate, and now you have generational wealth.

Well, your wealth will continually grow and you could give it to your kids.

Give you a quick example of how generational wealth works for me and my family.

So I have 30 plus single family homes.

They're long term rentals, short term, midterm, 60, you know, 30, 60, 90 days with traveling nurses and executives and things like that.

But I make, oh goodness, over $20,000 a month from all my properties.

This is positive.

This is like cash flow that I make from my properties.

And it's because I have these properties that make me money every single month.

And with a 30 year fixed loan that you get, and sometimes like one of my properties, I'm getting a 15 year fixed, four and a half percent.

Like right now you might be thinking interest rates are really high.

No, no, no.

You can also find really good deals.

I'm getting a 15 year 4 and a half percent loan on one of my properties.

It's absolutely amazing.

But once that paid off, I've been making $3,000 a month in passive income.

But with that mortgage I'm making, I want to say four or $500 a month in passive income from that.

But eventually that mortgage will be paid off.

But here's the great thing.

If you buy with a 30 year fixed or 15 year fixed basically alone, that disappears once the term is up 15 or 30 years.

Then you have that home free and clear.

Then you have all that passive income coming in.

I will absolutely give all of these properties to my kids so that they will have these for forever, unless they want to sell them or give them to their kids.

And another great thing I taught my 16 year old daughter, she's our oldest and every single one of my kids are going to do it as well.

I taught her to buy her first property.

She bought her first rental property in Akron, Ohio.

And it's making, I want to say $300 a month in passive income.

And I Said there's one catch though.

If I'm going to teach you how to do this, you cannot spend any of your passive income.

You have to save it for the next property.

And then once you buy that property, you're not going to spend it for 10 years and you're going to keep hopefully buying a property every single year for 10 years.

And then after 10 years, you'll be making five, $6,000 a month in passive income.

And so she agreed.

She said yes.

And I got five kids now.

And so my third, he's really, he goes, hey dad, I'm 13 now.

Ellie bought it at 16.

I want to buy, I want to beat her.

I'm going to buy a mine at 15.

I'm like, okay, we'll work on that.

And so if my kids can do it, there's you.

There's no doubt in my mind that you can absolutely do this.

Now.

Everything that we do here at Master Passive Income is my way to help or my goal in life.

My mission in life is to help 1 million people to invest in real estate.

And having this free podcast where you.

Can just come and week after week and just consume as much content on how to successfully invest in real estate.

I want to give that out as much as possible.

In fact, I've had lots of people reach out to me on Instagram if you want to follow me or reach out to me on Instagram.

The Dustin Heiner.

T H e Dustin Heiner.

You'll find me on there.

I post lots of stuff about real estate and lots of fun things.

Posted a golf meme here recently.

It's pretty hilarious but follow me on there.

But anyways, people reach out to me and say, Dustin, just from your podcast, I listened to it, I went back and listened to every single episode and I learned how to invest in real estate and I bought my first property.

Then I bought my second, third, fourth, fifth property just from the podcast.

This is the reason why I started back in 2016, started this podcast was to help people see I make my money through real estate.

That's how I make my money.

If you want coaching, we have all that for you.

But man, just get it all for free.

And if you want more help, we're there for you.

30 plus single family homes that I have.

I also own 750 apartment units, two big apartment complexes that I own, invest in hotels, but I have these as a way to make me money, provide for my family.

All this is just fun that I get to help you.

So I really appreciate you coming back week after week and listening to the show and even for, for those of you who went back and binged every single episode from the very beginning, we're at 300 and almost 400 episodes now.

That's impressive.

I'm super pumped to have you here with me now.

I am so excited to share with you my friend who with Etsy as well as real estate investing, become financially independent.

He traveled like literally travels the world over and over again.

He and his wife, they constantly, they're always going, going, going.

I finally got him to come speak at the Real Estate Wealth Builders Conference every year.

He's always been traveling do it because you know, springtime is really fun.

But he finally came and he also agreed to be on the podcast to share with you how he has a quote unquote side hustle but basically has a business that honestly runs on its own.

He sells things on Etsy but it's all self delivered through Etsy.

He just makes money.

It's a, it seems like a cash printing machine.

I wish I really did get on.

It myself because it just makes money.

I'll probably get my daughters to do it.

But I brought my good friend on the show who's going to show us how he can make or he does make lots of money through Etsy but then buys real estate with it.

So he has financial independence and generational wealth.

Let me bring on my friend Cody Berman from the FI show, the financial independent show and I want to pause.

For just a quick second and say thank you so much for listening to the show.

If you've gotten anything out of the show, I would appreciate it if you went to anywhere that you listen to say Apple or Spotify or wherever and leave a five star review.

Honestly, I really appreciate you leaving an honest review.

I just love giving all this information out and I want to see you succeed.

Also send this to one person.

Just tell one person, say hey Dustin wants to help a million people to invest in real estate.

You need to listen to this because it's going to change your life.

Lastly, get my real estate investment course completely for free.

Text the word rental R E N T A l rental to 33777 rental the 33777 I'll literally give you my course showing you everything in the business so that you can become financially independent.

Hey Cody, thank you so much for being on the show man.

Dustin, I hope I can follow up that amazing intro.

Thank you for having me on.

I am very excited for today.

Oh, as well as I know you, you're gonna.

That intro was nothing compared to all the value you're gonna deliver.

Because.

And I'm not even so for.

For you listening.

Cody is a good dude.

Like, even though I said it, I a hundred percent mean it.

Like 100%.

I'm super glad to have him on the show because what he's going to share with all of us.

So, Cody, you have businesses, you also invest in real estate.

You've been doing this.

When did you start investing in real estate?

And then what got you on the track to now being financially independent?

Because we love talking about financial independence.

But what got you started?

Was it before?

Like, because I know you were 19.

20.

19 into 2020.

But talk to us about how you got started in the the business as well as real estate.

You and others were definitely a huge influence in me getting started in real estate.

So I started investing in fall of my first rental property was a triplex house hack.

Me and my then girlfriend, now wife Lauren, lived in the basement unit.

We rented out the split level duplex on top of us.

But yeah, 2020 was my first foray.

And then we ended up buying 11 units that year from capital that I had acquired.

Wait, wait, wait, wait.

Did you say 11 units in the first year?

11 units in the first year.

Man, I dove in head first.

I had seen too many people like you, like other friends we have in the space who achieve financial freedom so fast.

Like some people, a year and a half, two years, five years, these crazy numbers of real estate because you can use leverage if you're using it correctly and using it smart.

So I was like, hey, I want a little piece of this pie.

So instead of just dumping all my money into index funds, I still do invest in index funds.

But I was like, let's allocate some of this capital over to real estate.

And it worked out tremendously as we'll talk about in today's podcast.

So how many units do you have now?

So we actually have not really scaled personal units.

And the reason I'm using the word personal units, and maybe you can correct me in my verbiage here, I have been investing a lot in syndications over the past couple of years.

So I probably quote unquote, if I wanted to be one of those real estate gurus on Instagram, I could say I have a thousand units.

But they say some of those units I have, you know, I have 1% ownership in.

So it's not really a thousand units.

I honestly haven't really expanded the portfolio since 2022.

So we only have 13 rental units.

When you say only, actually you're downplaying it.

You have businesses.

And you're right, like the syndicators of people that do they, they get other people's money and then they invest in this or they are limited partner and they invest in their money and they put their big number on it.

Whereas I'm like, I'm just a.

Your next door neighbor, you know, even though I have a lot of properties, like, it's not about me.

Let's help other people.

So yeah, definitely.

I mean, 13 units, that's fantastic.

Cash flowing.

But also at the same time, you have financial independence because you also have businesses, side hustles.

Like, you have a way to make money too, on top of real estate.

In fact, what I found, so I worked my tail off for seven, eight years to get enough properties where I didn't have to work anymore, which was a great route to go.

You also had a business that made you money and then you invested in real estate.

So a little bit similar, but at the same time different with side hustles, with having businesses and things like that that help you also to invest in real estate, but that gets you financial independence.

What is your suggestion?

Or maybe you have like an insight.

You know, somebody says, I'm going to stay at my job until I have enough properties or hey, I'm going to go all in and quit my job right away, build businesses and invest in real estate.

What are your insights?

Because you've also.

Oh, quickly, I got to share.

You have the FI show, which is a podcast as well as Gold City Ventures.

So Fi show is a great show.

I've been there a number of times, which is just fantastic.

Hang out with you and Justin and you've also interviewed lots and lots of business owners, lots of financial independent people.

But like, what are your insights?

When somebody said I want financial independence, what do you suggest?

This is a loaded question.

I am going to say the lawyer answer.

It depends.

It totally depends on your personality, what you want to do, what I will say.

I know you asked the question.

Should you jump ship and just go all into real estate or should you maybe stay at the job or maybe go the entrepreneurial route and start a business?

You need capital to invest.

Or I shouldn't say that.

It's easier to have capital to invest.

You can find partners, you can do all those things.

You can buy real estate with no money down.

I'm completely aware of those strategies, but for me it was a lot easier if I just had the down payments.

I didn't have to find a partner, I didn't have to get all the legal paperwork and all that stuff.

So quite frankly I was able to put down $200,000 in down payments in an 11 month span to buy those first, sorry, a one year span to buy those 11 properties.

I'm getting my 11s and 12s mixed here, but I was able to basically put $200,000 down, down payments, get those 11 units, those 11 units were cash flowing between, this is after all expenses, after mortgage payments, after maintenance, after capex, after like holdbacks, everything like that, between three and $3,500 a month and we were only spending 2,000 to $2,500 a month.

So literally we became five in a year, A year just because like we poured that $200,000 of capital into a strategic asset, real estate, leveraged real estate in a really high cash flowing area.

And so yeah, that's, that's kind of how it worked out for us.

But I don't want to, I don't want people to hear this story and think that's the only way to do it.

Like you can totally do it in a regular job.

You could have a high paying job, just have a really high savings rate, you could have a business that's cash flowing a lot and save a lot of that.

The key thing here is the savings rate.

If you are not saving money, you're not going to have much money to invest in real estate.

So whether you're earning that money through a 9 to 5 or a business or some other means, just make sure that you have a fat gap between your income and your expenses and then you can invest that gap into things like real estate.

And I love how from the very beginning you mentioned, well it's not impossible to invest without money.

It's not impossible, it's just harder.

It's so much easier when you have a little bit of capital to deploy.

And that's something that, let's say you started a business or a side hustle that you started doing something on the side when, where, let's say you're working a job and that j O B that just over broke job, you're living just over broke.

So you need to have a side hustle number one.

But number two, that money is helping you afford your life, you know, to live, put food on the table, all that sort of stuff.

But you need some other capital to be able to invest.

Now if you have a home that has equity, get a home economic credit, it's a great way, that's extra capital to deploy, but that's what it comes down to.

Do you have extra capital?

Now talk to me about a side hustle.

Not everybody knows what a side hustle is, but another way to make money, that is starting a business, doing something else.

But like, talk to us about that process.

If somebody said, man, I know Cody did this, I want to go down the route of side hustles, of, you know, starting businesses.

What do you suggest or what are your thoughts there?

So when we first met, Dustin, I don't know if you remember, but my whole online Persona was like the side hustle guy.

I had tried 30 plus different side hustles, from freelance writing to cleaning boats, to selling disc golf discs, to like, I tried everything physical stuff, online stuff, service based stuff.

I had tried everything.

The one that I've had a lot of success with, and we'll talk about a bit today, was selling digital products on marketplaces like Etsy and Shopify.

That's what funded a lot of these real estate ventures.

But just side hustle is basically something that you do that makes money outside of your main thing, whether that thing is a job or a business or whatever.

A side hustle is just an extra way to make money outside of that.

And a lot of people will kind of foo foo side hustles.

They're like, oh, why would I do that?

I don't need to make an extra ten grand a year.

But I've heard you on your podcast and a lot of other real estate investors talk about this stuff.

Like if you're living paycheck to paycheck an extra $10,000 per year in a side hustle, that could be your next house hack with an FHA loan.

You know, put the 3.5% down, all of a sudden you have a 250,000, $300,000 property.

I'm doing my live math correctly.

You could afford that just with one year of side hustling and making like an extra thousand bucks a month.

Like, it doesn't have to be life changing money.

And I think a lot of people don't want to start a side hustle because they really want the instant gratification.

They're like, oh, if I can't make ten grand next month.

You see all the people on Instagram crouching in front of the Lambos talking about, you know, start this drop shipping side hustle make 40 grand next month.

A lot of people don't want to put in the work, so they don't even start the side hustle in the first place.

But seriously, man, like, making a couple hundred extra bucks per month, which then becomes a thousand, which then becomes 2000.

That can start to really fast track your property acquisition as you get more money for down payments and investments.

I remember when you and I met, it was definitely before you bought your first property.

It was like February 2020, before the world closed down.

And we were skiing and everything.

And I remember you were telling me about Valentine's day.

Oh, man, we're making a lot of money selling these products on for Valentine's day.

I was like, well, shoot, maybe I should stop what I'm doing.

Let me go start selling things.

Like, it's a great, great business model.

Talk to us about how somebody could use etsy or shopify, but having these products that people want, they don't want to create it themselves.

They're like, hey, this is already here.

Let me go and buy it.

But you have gold city ventures where you show and coach people how to do this.

But, like, is that really.

It seems like a viable thing, but is that hard to break into?

So, yes and no.

Most people make the mistake of trying to sell generic things, things that everybody else already has.

And if you're a nobody and you don't have a big following or anything like that, it's really hard to break into a market where people can make a lot of money.

The riches are in the niches.

Sorry for those who say niches out there.

I like niches because it rhymes.

We're American.

The more you can.

Yes, absolutely.

The more you can niche down and create a unique product, Whether it's unique to you or you're just targeting a slightly different variation of that thing, that's where you can really start to make money.

So let's rewind to that Valentine's day week.

This was maybe a year after I had really started my digital products journey.

And during that week, when we were hanging out, Dustin, I was not on my laptop.

You can attest that, like, we're skiing all day.

We're hanging out in the lodge.

My little new etsy shop had made me over $700 that week without me having to touch it.

That's in a week.

So, you know, extrapolate that over a month.

That's like three grand in a month.

That's $36,000 in a year.

Hey, that's a couple down payments for a property.

And I have continued to build up my etsy shop, and I've earned a lot more money since then with digital products.

Actually started a new shop at the end of last year.

So we're recording this in March of 2025.

I started a new shop in August of 2024 just to, like, show people, because I had a lot of haters on some of my videos that were like, you got started so early.

Like, you got lucky.

You can never do this again.

I'm like, challenge accepted.

Started a new shop, was able to earn over $6,000 in four months.

And I'm like, all right, guys, like, this is me doing it on the side.

This is a still, still a viable side hustle.

So, yeah, man.

To circle back to your question, though, on is this still a viable side hustle?

Like, does this work?

Is it as easy as people make it seem if you try to sell generic stuff?

No.

If you do sell more keyword rich, more SEO optimized, like, things that people are actually searching for and there's a demand for, then yes.

And I actually have some examples.

I pulled up some shops for your real estate audience because obviously, let's keep this.

Let's keep this thing real estate and digital products and marry the two ideas.

There is a Realtor shop that I found on Etsy, and this Realtor shop has over 90,000 sales, and most of their stuff is between 20 and 50.

But yes, there's.

There's Realtor shops.

And this is just off memory.

I don't want to, I don't want to derail the podcast here, but they just have a.

Basically a bunch of templates that they probably use in their own business as a Realtor that they sell to other Realtors.

And again, these are like anywhere from 20 to $50.

They're selling these big packages of like, you know, here's all your move in checklist.

Here's your, like your closing checklist.

All this stuff, all these things that Realtors might use.

This shop has probably made between, I don't know, three hundred and five hundred thousand dollars.

And this is probably things that they're already using.

Like, they're not recreating the wheel.

They're.

They're already Realtors.

That's.

I read they're like a whole about section.

They're like, hey, you know, we're Realtors looking to help other Realtors.

So this is something that they already had that they then templatized, which is a verb I like to use templatized.

And then they could just sell it to other Realtors.

And there's so many instances of this.

Like, I've seen some other real estate investors who might have a Rental property, cash flow calculator.

And all they do is they sell that spreadsheet to other people.

$5, $10, $25, $100, depending on how complex the spreadsheet is.

And they make a crazy amount of money.

Bigger Pockets is a great example of this.

They have all these calculators.

They sell this membership.

Basically, all they're delivering is a digital product.

That's the things I'm talking about today.

Like, any calculator you get from them or from another, like, real estate source like that, That's a digital product they created one time, and now they've been able to resell that product thousands of times.

And you guys can do the math.

Like, you create one thing for 10 bucks, and it sells a thousand times.

There's $10,000 from something that you might have already created for yourself to scratch your own itch.

Well, I'm gonna have many opportunities out there.

I love it.

You're like, oh, man, I'm gonna start.

Listening to Analyzer that I created for myself.

And then I realized, man, I'm just giving to my students where they put in just a few different numbers, like the purchase price, how much it rents for, all that sort of stuff.

And then it has a criteria, and it has six different settings.

Settings, but, like, criteria for if it's a good deal or not of what I would want to buy.

And so I, you know, I give to my students who join, that's for free to them.

But I also sell it online for, like, you know, 27 bucks.

You can go right now and can buy it.

I'm like, shoot, I should put that on there.

That's a digital download.

Or like my forms that.

That people love.

They like, oh, man, I want the forms.

Like, well, you got to join the membership.

But how much better if somebody says, well, I know how to invest, but I want the calculator.

I want this download where I've already done the work.

Might as well put it out there.

And it's just another way for people to find it, because people are shopping on Etsy, they're shopping on Shopify.

And so that helps you to reach more people.

Absolutely.

And I actually did get that shop pulled up.

Just if people want a visual to see what it looks like, let's see if we can get this tech thing working.

Can I share my screen?

Is that.

Please go right here.

You should.

And then, so if you're watching or listening to this on the podcast, definitely check out the YouTube channel.

We have this available for you to see exactly what Cody's talking about.

But agent site shop is what it's called shop.

It's a couple.

They're agents.

And so let's just like look at a couple here.

Like they have this mega.

This one's $155.

The real estate bundle, the NAR sediment real estate bundle, the agent kit, the home value marketing flyer, the digital business card bundle.

Like these guys have everything.

And as you can see, 55,000 sales on Etsy.

A lot of these things they're already using themselves.

Like they might be a broker giving this out to all their agents anyway.

Why not just sell it to everyone on the Internet who has the ability to buy?

And man, I mean, we don't have insights in exactly how much they've made, but you can see the prices here.

You can see the sales numbers.

Crunch some numbers.

And these people are making a lot of money from templates and things that they've already built.

Well, if you look at one or sorry, the average of all of them.

Average is pretty high dollar amount.

But let's just say on average there's about $10 because they have some at $5, some at $10, $12, $100,000, some at 500,000.

Yeah.

So if they did, what was it?

Five?

55,000 sales, 54,000 sales.

So they did 1454,000 sales times.

Let's just say 10.

Oh, that's lowballing it.

It's 10.

Yeah, that's low.

Blowing it.

That would be five.

Would that be 5 million 540k?

No.

540k?

Yeah.

Got.

Yeah.

So if it's.

And that's probably lowball on a Dustin, I would.

Oh my goodness.

Dude me excited.

I want to start.

All right, we'll.

We'll hop off.

But yeah, check them out.

Agent site shop.

But man, that is like once this thing gets unlocked in your brain, you like.

I am just constantly, all the time thinking of like when I first discovered this, I already had the podcast the five show that you talked about where you interview people and talk about how to reach financial independence.

We like built this elaborate media kit after actually the debt free guys did this presentation at fincon and they were like, hey, we just landed like this fifty thousand dollar sponsorship.

Here's our media kit.

I was like, copy.

I'm gonna basically take their media kit.

I'm gonna create a version for myself.

Once we got the version, like Justin and I were editing it and making it really nice.

What did I do?

I white labeled that, I threw it in my Etsy shop and it sold a bunch of times.

So, like, there's so many instances where, especially if you're a business owner, like, if you have SOPs, if you have templates, if you have documents, if you have PDFs that you're using internally for your team, whatever, and you can just white label them to like, get your info off there.

That could easily be a digital product that you sell in your Etsy shop or Shopify or somewhere else.

So there's like so many opportunities, especially for analytical folks like real estate investors.

If you already have like a property calculator or you already have some like amazing spreadsheet for, like, these are the things you need to do when you first, when you buy your first rental property or you have an ebook, whatever.

All these things are things that can be monetized as a digital product.

Now can you put these things on something like Amazon?

Because obviously we know Amazon's a juggernaut when it comes to people searching because we have Etsy, we have Shopify.

Is there any other medium that you would put these on?

I like Etsy because Etsy's algorithm for digital products seems to work the best, especially for new sellers.

Now if you're someone who already has a huge audience, you can go the Shopify route.

You could go like, use WordPress and use WooCommerce.

We won't get to the weeds here.

But the reason I like Etsy, Amazon's okay, but it's better for a physical product seller.

The reason I like Etsy is they just do a really good job of pushing digital products forward to the people that are searching for them.

And you don't have to have your own audience.

It's the same as Amazon.

Like, Amazon is great if you just throw your stuff up there.

If you have a book and it's not on Amazon, like, you might be missing a lot of people.

Even though Amazon takes a cut, like, Amazon is just delivering people to your doorstep.

It's the same thing with Etsy.

Some people, there's a whole thing a couple of years ago where Etsy raised its fees by like one and a half percent and people were up in arms.

But I'm like, heck, if Etsy's bringing me customers and I don't have to drum up my own customers on social media or email list or website or any of that.

Like, Etsy could take almost as much as they want.

Like, I would never would have had this person buy my thing anyway.

So I think it's awesome putting your stuff on these platforms that serve it up to people that don't know you at all and then they take a small cut.

So sorry to answer your question directly though, Etsy in my opinion is better for digital products than Amazon.

If you are selling something like a physical real estate bundle, I don't know, but that could be a good placement on Amazon.

So with Etsy it seems like, like obviously like you said, the digital products are fantastic.

How do you find like let's say you're, you're like, man, I'm not even doing anything right now.

Is there a way that you can figure out, man, I want to create something.

What is a good niche that we should go after to get riches niches in there, in the riches.

So yeah, how do we find more things?

The riches are just.

Yes, great question, great question.

Dustin, you're a good interviewer.

So there's a couple tools out there and some are Etsy specific.

The ones that are not Etsy specific, you could just use like Google Trends or even Pinterest Trends to see what people are searching for.

Those are two great free tools if you're just getting started.

There's one called ubersuggest that's also like a free keyword research tool that kind of just tells you what people are searching on Google for digital products specifically.

The two that I use is called Erank and Ever be and those are more Etsy digital product specific.

But I'll literally type in.

So we could type in something like Realtor or real estate template and then you just like hit enter, see what comes up and actually show you.

You know, 1400 people are searching for this variation.

600 people are searching for like this keyword variation.

So what I was talking about before, people get bogged down and people get stuck and people don't make sales because they're oftentimes just competing with like the thing that I would type into the search bar to generate results.

They might just like try to be selling a real estate template.

But the more you niche down, like if you sell some kind of specific like a Missouri real estate template or whatever that niche down version might be, that's where you're going to start out competing other people because there's way less people selling that thing.

So where people make the big mistake is they try to try to go generic and then they get just beat up by the big dogs who have been there forever.

And if you don't have an audience, if you don't have like a, a standing with the Etsy algorithm, you're probably not going to get picked.

Not Saying it won't happen, but you're going to have more success with the slightly more niche down versions.

And then you can niche up later on as you start to build your shop up.

Which that gets me to thinking of scaling.

So that Realtor site, like they had a lot of products.

Is this something that we can scale?

Like, okay, we start with one thing and then we can scale from there.

Like what have you seen?

Because you have lots of students that you coach people how to do this.

What do you think about scaling your business?

Yeah, I think with scaling you can start and just be in one specific niche.

Now for these real estate people, it would kind of be weird if they started making like fitness printables, for example, and fitness digital products.

That would just be a little bit outside because they're so branded as these real estate agents.

But you can totally scale and start in like a hyper niche thing and then start to branch out and expand your products.

We've seen some students in our course who start just telling say a budgeting template, but then they build out and have this like whole personal finance suite.

And we've seen some people actually in the personal finance space leave their jobs just by building this like whole personal finance digital product shop.

So it can, I mean these, these things can scale to the moon.

And the beauty of digital products versus physical people might be wondering like, why is this guy only talking about digital products?

With a digital product, you create it once you upload the file to the marketplace, whether it be Etsy or Amazon or Shopify, and when the buyer buys the thing, it's automatically delivered it to them.

It's automatically delivered to them.

So you don't have to do anything.

Unlike a physical product where like, oh, an order came in, let's go to the post office and like ship this thing out.

I've been in that business before, Dustin.

You remember I had the disc golf manufacturing company that I was literally like staying up till 3am sometimes packaging up discs and shipping them out.

It was a nightmare.

It was a nightmare.

So I'm a digital products guy through and through now.

And that's why I'm such a big advocate, because it is one of the closest things that I've experienced to passive income.

It's like the only thing I really have to do once the product is up and in my shop is respond to customer questions.

And I've mapped this out and I get a question, 1 in 20 purchases.

So about 5% of the time.

And those questions often take, oftentimes take two minutes to Answer.

Yeah, you probably already answered all of them before.

It could be a copy and paste.

Like, I already know what they're going to.

Exactly.

So another question I have is, is can you retarget like your customer?

Can you email them, hey, we have a new product, is there, I don't know about Etsy, like, can you do something like that?

Or you just gotta, you don't get access to them after the fact.

There are ways to get access to them strategically.

You can't just scrape all the people that have bought your stuff and like put them on your email list.

That's a no no on Etsy.

But there are ways that I've seen and that I've used where like in your description or in your listing images you could say like, hey, join my, you know, join my club, join my email list and you'll get like this digital product for free.

And so they just enter their email or maybe they'll get like 50% off their next order.

So even those real estate people I showed you, I think they have something like if you join our community, and this is in every single one of their listings, like their last listing picture in their description.

If you join our community at this website, like you'll get this free bundle or whatever.

And of course now they're probably retargeting these people.

They probably have this like whole real estate network.

And that's another thing.

This is a great, great segue.

Now they have people who bought this like realtor thing.

Now they can maybe sell them a realtor course now maybe they can enroll them in their brokerage.

Like this is just the gateway into the business.

Like, so I'm hoping the business owners listening to this just because you made a $10 sale on Etsy, because some people still, they're like, well, why would I want to bother with this hot hustle?

It's just 10 bucks.

This can just be the, the step into your ecosystem and then you can upsell them and have them join your brokerage or do whatever.

Like this is just to get them into your orbit, into your ecosystem and then you can, you can take them down any funnel, any which way you want.

So yeah, this is, it's a great way to just kind of get people familiar with you, trust you, know that you have quality information, know that you're a good person and then you can get them on your email list and you can do whatever your heart pleases, whatever your business is, whatever you're selling, whatever your services are, whatever your end goals or intentions are.

Then you can start to push them towards that.

Could you sell the a PDF or like a book, you know, like instead of a physical book.

Is that something that like because I have my book on Amazon, people buy it on Amazon, which is great, a few of them.

Would that be also advantageous to put it on Etsy or is it something that should be like a shorter condensed, like a printable or something like that?

Great question.

I would say a shorter condensed version.

I have not seen full books do very well on Etsy.

It's more like a maybe a 30 page PDF if we were to just condense it down into some images and just like the really important parts of each chapter that could go over really well.

Just rebrand it as like the ultimate, you know, guide to buying rental real estate or whatever, however you want to frame it.

But yeah, I see people do really, really well with ebooks.

Full length books though I have not seen do well on Etsy or I'm not even sure if Etsy will let you upload something that you got me so excited.

Like I could see how I could help more people to invest in real estate by taking the things that already have, putting it on there and saying also, hey, join my newsletter where I'm going to give you so much more information on that, on everything.

So you got me excited again.

Last time you got me excited, but I just never did anything about it.

So this time even more excited that I got to do this now.

You've coach lots of people how to do this.

It's something you enjoy doing.

Obviously you've proven the concept twice now as well as all your students.

So people want to connect with you, want to work with you.

Like how would they be able to find you?

Gold City Ventures is where we have all things digital products and printables.

We have a free workshop on there.

We have free resources on there.

We have a bunch of free stuff to get started.

We also have a paid course.

If you like really want to dive in, like the A to Z of, you know, create ideation, to creation, to marketing, all that stuff.

But I'm not going to try to push that on you.

If you guys are super interested, you could totally take me up and join the paid course in our community.

We'd love to have you, but we also have a bunch of free resources for those who just want to dabble and check it out and then also the FI show as well.

I mean one of the things that I really want to do and I know.

Thank you Dustin for the kind words at the Beginning I don't want to just like be this guy who's like a make money online guy.

Like I want people to do good things with that money because so often I see entrepreneurs who all of a sudden, you know, their income increases a bunch but they don't know what to do with it.

And so I get to scratch my own itch of like kind of giving back in the personal finance sphere with my podcast the Fi show, telling people how to invest in things like real estate and index funds and other places to ultimately reach financial independence.

Because I am not one to say side hustle for side hustle sake.

Like side hustle with intention so that you can then buy or build things that will give you passive income and the ability to quit that job that just over broke job.

Love it, love it.

What about your social media?

I know people want to follow you on there too.

Yeah, so I'm Odyd Berman pretty much everywhere.

You can check out my passive income stuff.

I actually have that whole.

I did like a whole series documenting that new Etsy shop from day zero to day 116.

Day 116 was the day I crossed $1,000 per month in sales.

That was like the goal of the shop, to see how quickly I could do that.

So yeah, you can follow me everywhere.

Odyd Berman.

Love it.

Cody, so great knowing you and having you be a part of obviously the show a couple times now as well as coming to Rubecon, speaking about financial independence and coaching people and helping people.

Like, I just love that you and I have very similar outlooks on so many things and great having you as a friend and great having you on the show.

I really appreciate you, Dustin.

You've been an awesome friend over what, five or six years at this point.

It's been a long time, man, and we've both grown so much, but we're still both out there helping people and I'm really hoping that.

I just want one person to take action from this episode, start selling digital products, start a side hustle and start using that to fund their real estate.

So really appreciate you having me on, man.

And can't wait till next time.

You heard it obviously from Cody.

He knows that When's the best time to plant a tree?

It was 20 years ago.

The next best time is literally today.

Plant that tree.

You do not want to be 20 years from now thinking, man, I was listening to Cody on Master passive Income.

He was talking about investing in real estate.

He was talking about starting an Etsy.

I wish I would have done it back then.

No, no, no.

You want to think 20 years from now.

I'm so glad I took action right then and there 20 years ago and look at where I'm at now.

So obviously Cody and myself are proof.

We're just guides.

We've done it before.

We're going to show you how to do it.

So definitely start working with Cody.

We're here for you.

Come to Rubecon.

You're going to be such so blown away at all the amazing people just like Cody.

That's going to be a part of it.

So, Cody, thank you so much for being on the show, man.

Thank you, man.

I am very excited for Rubecon and I'll see you in about a month.

And that is it for today.

Go ahead and get my free real estate investing course, Texas word rental to 3377.

R e n t a l to 33777.

You can also join my real estate.

Wealth builders group coaching.

Get all my courses.

All right, guys, we'll see you in the next show.

See ya.