How To Start an Online Side Hustle 💰💰💰

Content writer makes bank

Build A Side Hustle Kiss The 9 to 5 Goodbye

Working a 9 to 5 desk job has long been the norm, but it doesn’t have to be! I had a great run of working from home fulltime, working for a company while running a side business and then various splits of the above. As long as you can manage your time you can do it as well.

82% of people who work from home have lower stress levels because they’re able to control their environment to suit their personal needs.

Imagine being able to run your business empire from your couch in your favourite power suit (your pajamas, obviously).

Or maybe you just want to make some cash on the side ― we can help with that too!

Become a Social Media Influencer

Over 80% of internet users are on social media, and big brands need influencers to help them reach this massive market.

If you’re able to create quality content for social media and you’re willing to put time into engaging with your community, you’d be a perfect influencer!

And you don’t even need millions of followers ― there’s a growing demand for micro-influencers (influencers with less than 10 000 followers).

Companies want to work with micro-influencers because their smaller audiences trust them and are more easily influenced by them.

To become an influencer your social media needs to convey a clear personal brand.

Make sure you understand your audience and interact with them regularly ― this way you’ll know what they’re willing to buy.

When your Instagram is looking crisp and your audience is fully engaged, approach companies that suit your brand and offer your services as an influencer.

As your following grows, brands will start approaching you.

Be cautious about who you choose to promote ― your followers trust you to be honest.

If you want to learn from the professionals, YouTube is loaded with “How to Become an Influencer” tutorials.

Pros:

  • Flexible working hours and location
  • Loads of freebies

Cons:

  • Lack of job security
  • You have to maintain your integrity

Dropshipping Business Model

Running an ecommerce store using dropship is a low-effort way to make money online.

This ecommerce business model has very little startup and overhead costs because you aren’t producing, storing, or shipping the products yourself.

Here’s how it works:

  • You design an online store where you sell products
  • When you receive an order, you forward it to your supplier
  • The supplier ships the product to the customer

You charge customers a retail price for the product, while your supplier charges a wholesale price.

So, if your customer pays you $10 for a product and you forward their order to your supplier who charges you $9 to fulfill the order, you’ll get a profit of $1.

Sounds easy right?

Well, it is!

Besides running and marketing the products on your online store, dropshipping requires very little effort from you.

Pros:

  • Low startup and overhead costs
  • You can automate the process

Cons:

  • No control over the quality of products
  • Low-profit margins

Start Affiliate Marketing

This is a good option for someone who already has a big social media following or a large, engaged email list.

You advertise a product and recommend it to your audience who then purchases it using your affiliate link.

To be a good affiliate marketer, it’s important that you actually believe in the product you’re pushing or your link will be left untouched.

When your link is used for a purchase, you get a commission!

If you’re feeling ready to start affiliate marketing, why not market something that you use everyday? In most cases the website of the products that you love should have a footer link to a partner or affiliate option. You sign up and start promoting them for commission and everyone wins.

I really enjoy wearing Nike footwear and since I enjoy it Ive built an entire affiliate niche site around Nike shoes, Ive added my affiliate links and create content around the shoe styles that I like wearing. The site isnt a huge earner for me but its consistent commission from a brand I like their products and the kicker (get it) is that I can create content for this with ease.

 

Pros:

  • You can start today with most platforms
  • If you become an affiliate, you can earn from 5% to 40% per sale

Cons:

  • Getting your link out there requires constant effort
  • Won’t work unless you’ve got an audience

Find Freelance Work on Fiverr

Fiverr has an average of 50 million transactions every month.

With so many transactions, there are endless opportunities for freelance work!

Fiverr is an online platform where freelance workers can connect with people who need once-off jobs to be completed.

Gigs on Fiverr can be anything from copywriting a sales page to designing a company logo ― but we suggest you start with your strengths and marketable skills.

Try to be specific about what you can do, and don’t oversell your abilities.

To be successful on Fiverr, you need to have social proof in the form of reviews.

So when you’re still a newbie, set low prices and deliver work at a high standard, and the good reviews will start flooding in.

Then it’ll be time to increase your prices and scale your operation.

Pros:

  • Get paid immediately after completing a gig
  • Very scalable

Cons:

  • Fiverr takes a commission when you do a gig
  • It takes a few months of consistent work for things to start taking off

Publish an eBook

It costs nothing to write your own eBook, and there are plenty of options for online publishing.

A popular one is Amazon’s KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing), which allows anyone to publish as many eBooks as they like.

The catch is that, as the author, you only get up to 70% royalties when you make a sale.

If you produce high-quality eBooks regularly, Amazon’s algorithms will make sure your eBooks get lots of hits, so 70% could be more than enough.

But if you’ve already got an audience, sell your eBook from your own website and keep 100% of the profits for yourself!

If you’re wondering what to write about, these are the best-selling eBook categories on Amazon:

  • Religion and spirituality
  • Biographies and memoirs
  • Business and money
  • Self-help
  • Cookbooks, food, and wine

We think it’s best to write books that you actually want to read, then work will become play, and you’ll have your first eBook published in no time.

Pros:

  • Writing an eBook is free
  • If you write about something you enjoy, it won’t feel like work

Cons:

  • You only get up to 70% royalties if you use Amazon KD
  • It’s not a passive income

Start Blogging (Gateway to other $$ Methods)

With blogging, you can make no money, or you can make big money.

Blogging is a great way to make money online in 2021, and there are plenty of great (free) blogging platforms for you to try.

You can blog about almost anything, but the most popular types of blogs in 2021 are:

  • Food blogs
  • Travel blogs
  • Health and fitness blogs
  • Lifestyle blogs
  • Fashion and beauty blogs

Building your audience will take time and dedication (and some knowledge of SEO best practices), but once you’ve done that, you can start using your blog to make money from home.

When you’ve got tons of traffic coming to your blog, you can start selling ads and backlinks or doing some affiliate marketing.

Eventually, your audience might start wanting more, so you can come up with a product or service to sell from your blog.

For example, if your blog is about fitness, you can sell a fitness guide or a consultation to kickstart a client’s fitness journey.

With blogging, the possibilities are almost endless! LEARN HOW HERE

If you’re interested in learning more, check out our guide to starting a profitable blog.

Pros:

  • You can write about your passion
  • Lots of easy-to-use platforms to build your blog on

Cons:

  • Blogging is a lot of work
  • You can’t start making money until you’ve built your audience
 
 

Monetize your Gaming with Twitch

I would of never thought about this in my teen years but its real and growing bigger than anyone imagined. I have a friend doing this and he’s smashing his full time salary out the water and now plays games and gets paid. My daughter showed me how she uses Twitch and all she’s doing is watching other people play video games
Im lost why they watch instead of play alongside or play the game themselves. Buy hey whatever works right!

If you’re an amazing gamer, we know a way you can monetize that skill!

With Twitch, you can turn your hobby into a money magnet.

Twitch is an online platform where gamers share their screens, and viewers pay to watch them.

With almost 3 million active viewers per week, streaming on Twitch is a great way to make money from home.

The main way of making money on Twitch is through donations.

But building up a big enough following will earn you Affiliate or Partner status, and you’ll start earning ad revenue.

It doesn’t get any better than earning money by doing something you enjoy.

Pros:

Cons:

Become a YouTuber

This follows on from gaming with Twitch is being on YouTube and if you connect the two channels you could combine two streams of revenue. 

We’re sure you’ve heard that you can learn anything on YouTube.

Well, it goes both ways.

You can teach anything on YouTube too.

Beyond sharing your skills, there are so many genres on YouTube that you can create content for.

At the time of writing, the top five YouTube genres are:

  • Commentary
  • Product Reviews
  • How-To’s/Tutorials
  • Top Lists
  • Comedies

Once you have 1000 subscribers, YouTube will start paying you ad revenue.

To get that subscriber count up, always include a strong call-to-action at the end of your videos ― that’s when YouTubers say: “Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and comment if you enjoyed the video”.

You should also film videos longer than 10 minutes, write compelling video titles, and reply to every comment.

You can even use your YouTube Channel as a platform for some of the other ways to make money such as affiliate marketing or selling things online.

Pros:

  • Starting a YouTube channel is free
  • You can reach a massive, worldwide audience

Cons:

  • Editing videos for YouTube takes time
  • YouTube is very competitive

Become an Online Tutor

Talking about niches that are exploding, online tutoring is going through the most rapid growth phase it has ever seen. People can not get enough of online tutors. I sought out a tutor when I was learning Python as I was stuck on one section but after some coaching sessions I managed to come together and learn that skill.

Now that you’ve spent loads of money on your education, you can use it to make loads of money.

Depending on your education and experience, tutoring can be a seriously lucrative way to make money from home.

If you’re good at maths or science (or any other academic subject), show off your grades to attract struggling students.

If you’re fluent in English, you can find some non-English speakers looking for online classes.

It may be useful to list yourself on a tutoring platform such as Tutor.com or Superprof.

Or, if you prefer to work independently (and keep all of your earnings to yourself), post adverts to your local social media groups or even Craigslist.

Tutoring for the TEFL academy is also a great option, but you have to complete some TEFL courses before you can join their team.

Pros:

  • Even though you’re at home, you’ll still get to interact and help people
  • Parents are often willing to pay high prices when it comes to their children’s education

Cons:

  • Tutoring platforms take a cut of your money
  • If you go without a platform, you’ll have to put effort into marketing your offer

Teach an Online Course

This one is close to my heart as I have been teaching in various industries since 2007.

It’s predicted that by 2026, the eLearning market will be valued at $375 billion!

And there are platforms available for everyone!

If you want to host your course for free on your own domain.

If you choose to host your own course, you’ll need to handle the marketing side of things.

You can use our email marketing tools to send people the first module of your online course for free, then they’ll be sure to purchase the rest of it!

Or, if you want to teach short courses and pop them onto a marketplace, you can have a look at Skillshare or Udemy ― but you’ll make a lot less money this way.

Your course content should deliver great value for your students so they leave great reviews, and keep coming back.

Read reviews of similar courses to see what people liked and didn’t like so you can work out what to include or exclude in your course.

You can make your online course from start to finish with our course-creating platform.

Pros:

  • Getting started with systeme.io is free, quick, and easy
  • You can create courses on anything from business coaching to origami

Cons:

  • It takes time to create the content for your course
  • Many course creation platforms take a share of your earnings or require you to pay monthly fees
 

Final Words

Life’s too short to stay at your desk job!

As you can see, there are lots of ways to make money from home.

Whether it’s a side-hustle or a main-hustle, these tips will help you escape the rat race.

But they definitely work best in conjunction so consider doing 2 or 3 of these for amazing results.

Remember to do your research and be patient with the method you choose.

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