It doesn't matter what type of business you own or run. At some point, you're likely to experience a downturn. Hopefully, this won't last long. But, it is a natural part of doing business. You can circumvent this situation by learning how to start a side hustle.
What Is a Side Hustle?
As you can probably guess, a side hustle is an activity that you do on the side from your regular job or business which has the potential to earn money.
Why You Should Start One
The obvious reason was described in the opening paragraph: to help keep afloat during downturns in your business.
What Kind of Side Hustle Should You Start?
This is limited only by your imagination. The good news is the internet makes it easy for your to make it happen.
How Much Will It Cost?
You can get started for free and use the money you earn to put back into your side hustle.
How Do You Find the Time for a Side Hustle?
There are methods to help you (discussed below) manage your time effectively. Taking a leap of faith and believing in what you are doing are components that lead to success as well.
What Resources Are Available to Help with Your Side Hustle?
I will discuss several options for you in this article.
Where To Go for Help When You're Stuck
You have but to reach out to others who have been successful in side hustles. You are more than welcome to reach out to me.
Enlisting the Help of Others
Leveraging the work of others can streamline your side hustle and bring you success quicker than you've ever imagined. You have to learn how to do this right, however.
Monitoring Your Success
If you don't monitor how you're doing, you won't know whether your efforts are paying off. If you don't keep track, you run the risk of wasting time.
Where to Go From Here
I'll discuss the next steps for you to take to start your new side hustle.
Already Know About Side Hustles?
If you want to jump right to the best side hustle available, click on the link to the right! NOTE: Site owner may receive a commission from resulting sign up or sale.
What Is a Side Hustle?
It used to be that you had to work a part time job to make extra money. Most business owners would rather fold their business than to work for someone else. You branched out on your own so that you wouldn't have to work for someone else. That's the point.
Also, why spend time pumping up some other business owner's dream when you can put more time into your business in hopes that it leads to productive output?
The reality is that cash flow is a crucial part of keeping any business going. If you experience a cash flow crunch or shortfall, it's going to increase your stress and cause you to consider finding alternative ways to make money.
All is not lost since you can now use the internet to create a side hustle.
Why You Should Start One
There are many reasons to start a side hustle (or two or three). I already stated that it can help during downturns in your business. However, it can also help to diversify into other areas in case that downturn is not so temporary.
Business cycles change, as do the wants and needs of consumers. Creating a side hustle can help you anticipate those changes by "going with the flow" as they say.
Many people create several side hustles and use the income from each to contribute to their overall income. This helps them keep diversified.
If you aren't convinced of the need of side hustles, you should consider the following article. It's a story of a farmer who generates more income from his YouTube channel than his farm. He does because farming on its own does not provide for his family.
[Tsekova , Denitsa. “Farmers Earn More from YouTube than Their Crops .” Farmers Earn More from YouTube than Their Crops, 22 July 2019, www.msn.com/en-us/money/smallbusiness/farmers-earn-more-from-youtube-than-their-crops/ar-AAEEbPb?ocid=spartandhp.]
What Kind of Side Hustle Should You Start?
What kinds of activities do you like to do? What do you daydream about while sitting in your office? Perhaps you liked to trade baseball cards as a kid. Or, maybe you loved model railroading. Get your creative juices flowing and come up with at least five ideas for businesses that you can start. Don't worry if they seem outlandish. Just get them recorded on a piece of paper.
You can start with your hobbies and then branch out into areas of your current business. You can think about the interests of your family members.
The easiest business to start is a blog and is a viable business, despite what you might hear. It's easy because you can do it from anywhere. Before Content Management Systems (CMS) like WordPress existed, this was tougher to pull off due to technical constraints. But, CMS solutions have made it easy for anyone to start.
I'll include the following in the resources section, but one good place to get started with ideas for side hustles is Side Hustle Nation.
A couple of pointers when looking at the website:
The best side hustles are ones that you can do from the comfort of your home and ones that once set up, continue to generate income (passively). One great example of this is via dividend investing. You buy a stock that pays a dividend and it continues to pay you into the future. The same is true with bond investing.
NOTE: please don't take either of these suggestions as investment advice. Seek out a qualified professional for such advice.
How Much Will It Cost?
It depends on the type of side hustle you start. There are plenty of side hustles you can start for free. For instance, there are free blogging platforms that allow you to start blogging without spending money. This isn't always the best option as there can be restrictions. But, it is something that is available.
Training should be a factor in the cost as well. Unless you know how to work your side hustle, obtaining the proper instruction will help you succeed faster than if you simply wing it. This is not something you should skimp on. Of course, you can find free training on platforms such as YouTube. But, be wary of what these video creators are selling. They don't usually offer free training out of the goodness of their hearts.
Below, I will point you to a resource that offers free training on one type of business that you should seriously consider. It is one where you can set up and just manage over time. When set up correctly, it provides a recurring income stream!
How Do You Find the Time for a Side Hustle?
We have 24-hours per day to work with. Most of us either manage our business or go to work for a good chunk of that time, and we also need to sleep (very important - don't skip this item!)
Too often, we get excited by the prospect of earning an extra income through a side hustle, only to discover how difficult it can be to find extra time. The key is to establish priorities as follows:
What Resources Are Available to Help with Your Side Hustle?
The following resources will help you to choose a side hustle, get training, and tips for managing the business.
Where To Go for Help When You're Stuck
With the myriad ways of earning money online, there's bound to be a point when you feel a bit stuck. When this happens, you may get desparate and start reaching for solutions. Many of the solutions will require you to pay money and will often lead to disappointing results. This concept is known as Shiny Object Syndrome.
There are other causes for Shiny Object Syndrome such as offers to get rich quick or for automated systems (also known as Business-in-a-Box). These sellers try to feed you the dream that you can retire just by buying and following their systems. The worst part of this situation is that sometimes what they are selling will work temporarily. But, then the market gets saturated and stops working. Most of these systems will never work out of the gate.
The point of discussing Shiny Object Syndrome is to help you avoid it from the start. It won't help you and will cause you to spend unnecessary money and learn all the wrong techniques. Often, the techniques you learn are downright illegal or will get you banned somehow.
Find trustworthy resources that you can rely on for help when you need it. Communities and forums are great for this. Don't spend any money on these. You can look for groups and pages on LinkedIn or Facebook. You can also search for "forums" with your associated niche or field.
If you decide to adopt an affiliate business model, I have a great resource that you can use whenever you need help.
It gives you training, but also has an extensive network of professionals that will serve as mentors on a moment's notice. That's huge! Any question you have regarding you affiliate business, you simply post in the chat, and you'll find several qualified people answering those questions.
Enlisting the Help of Others
Community-based help is only one form of help for businesses. Another is outsourcing many of the tasks to other qualified individuals. For instance, if you need to write posts for your blog, find someone in your niche who is a freelance writer and ask them to write several posts for you. To test these people out, start with one article to see how they do. Even if they botch the article, they will likely still have a foundation that you can fix yourself.
To find the right freelancers, stay away from what are known as content mills. Although you can find inexpensive resources here, the truly valuable resources won't go near these websites. A content mill is a website that has freelancers bidding for the jobs. You can usually find cheap help, but this comes at the cost of driving valuable freelancers away.
The moral of the story is you get what you pay for. You will stumble upon good freelancers on these content mills. The trouble is, they don't last on these sites once they discover clients that pay much higher rates. The clients that care about their businesses don't want to be bothered correctly spelling or grammar errors. They also don't want to deal with nonnative writers.
If you choose to use these content mills, you will find that you'll be constantly looking for workers. Conversely, when you find a great freelancer and pay what he or she is worth, you'll get great results with a minimal amount of supervision. Isn't that what outsourcing should be about, after all? Don't skimp. Look for people who can deliver quality and pay them to produce great results for your business.
Monitoring Your Success
Please don't make the mistake of not monitoring your success. If you start a side hustle, you'll want to check on a regular basis whether it is making you money. You also want to check to make sure you're not spending more than you're making. You'll find it difficult to know without tracking your information.
Besides, when you start earning significant money from your side ventures, you'll need to report it to your government tax organization. If you don't keep track, you'll be scrambling at the last minute during tax season. When you keep an accurate accounting of the expenses and income, you'll have a much easier time reporting this information!
A Word of Caution...
You'll see many posts or articles describing companies that pay you to view videos, take surveys, mystery shopping, read emails, etc. While many of these are legit, they won't yield particularly promising results on the income department. Often, you'll have to spend a good chunk of your time to gain a few cents (yes, that's cents and not dollars!) I am not trying to knock these companies. They have their purposes. If you feel you want to participant in them, then that is your choice. But, you will get tired of getting paid a few pennies for hours worth of work. Work smarter, not harder!
Where to Go From Here
I've given you some great resources (above) to help you get started with your side hustle. An affiliate business is one of the best businesses to start as a side hustle, and it's one that can grow into something more permanent and full time (if you want). It's also a great way to start a side hustle because there is little that you need in the way of resources other than a website. If you already have a website, then you have most of what you need for an affiliate business.
If you want to know how to start a side hustle, I would suggest starting an affiliate business which is a low-risk model to start. While it's not a difficult business model, you want to learn it correctly so it doesn't end up costing you in time and money.
The following resource (below) is free to get started in learning about an affiliate business. The best part is you don't have to leave your credit card. It gives you a full leg of training that when followed, will have you creating a complete website when the training is complete (assuming you do all the given tasks!) This means for free, you can have a website that is fully capable of earning you side hustle money. Seriously, what do you have to lose in trying this?
"WHO ELSE IS READY FOR SOME SIDE HUSTLE SUCCESS?"
A side hustle that you can get started with right now is an affiliate business. You can learn more about this by clicking on the button below. It's a low-risk business model that you can starting earning quickly. It's free to join, but if you upgrade (not required) then I would receive a commission.
However, my suggestion is to learn the concepts first and get your website ready to earn before making that decision. It is true that people who upgrade tend to succeed quicker, but you can still learn about the system with the Starter Account.
