With the looming recessions and global financial crisis, now is the best time to start a side hustle to prop up your current main income stream and add more paths to augment your regular budget.
Luckily, you’ve come to the right place!
The barrier to entry is zero to none as the necessary equipment required is usually already readily available (laptop, internet, socials, etc).
All you need is a little list of legitimate sources that you can leverage to earn extra cash as soon as you can. Luckily for us, there are plenty of liable resources available on the market where you can quickly jump in and start earning. Such an experience is described in the post “How I earned more than $11,000 on Fiverr“.
This mega list will serve as your anchor as you go and try each of the suggested sites. We will release a more in-depth guide on each niche from hereon to make sure the guidance continues once you get the right mix and match of the perfect side hustle income for your kind of lifestyle and income goals.
Freelancing
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- Writing:
A writing business is a venture that involves creating written content for clients, such as blog posts, articles, website copy, and other types of written materials.As a business, it offers a flexible and potentially lucrative option for those looking to improve their personal finances. Whether you’re a stay-at-home parent, a recent college graduate, or someone looking for a side hustle, a writing business can provide a steady stream of income and the opportunity to work from anywhere.
- Writing:
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- Virtual Assistant:
Starting a virtual assistance business can is not for the faint of heart. Like most businesses, you are to comply with a lot of regulations. It is very easy to start and it helps put you in the trenches of other businesses so you can have a first-hand experience of what it would take to run your own business. There are plenty of places where you can learn more about being a virtual assistant.
Article > All You Need To Know About Starting a Virtual Assistance Business
- Virtual Assistant:
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- Graphics
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- SEO:
Local SEO, or local Search Engine Optimization, is a process of optimizing business sites to achieve better rankings, basically to be more visible in local search results.
When more people click on your business listing in search results, stay on your site, interact with your content, and write reviews about your products/services, your business will likely show in local searches. SEO Services are in high demand and therefore a low hanging fruit opportunity when starting a small business.
Article > Why Local SEO Matters.
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- Photography
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- Web design and dev
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- Outsourcing
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- Customer support
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- Voiceover work
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- Translation
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- Marketing
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- Paid newsletter
If you have a lot of extra time after your current shift, open your computer and go to sites like Fiverr, Upwork, and Toptal, sign up (if you haven’t yet) and create your profile + portfolio.
The job preferences listed above are just the tip of the entire iceberg because freelancing is much larger not just in the USA but around the world. Naturally as in any market, you will face competition, do not let that deter you. Competition is an indication of a hungry market, just keep in mind that your success will depend on how you market yourself.
There are dozen-a-dime writers and Virtual Assistants but not every one of them also has other entrepreneurial skills.
If you have more skills this means more $$$ to your bank account. You can integrate not just one type of service but package them all in one so clients don’t need to hire more people. Start by reading and implementing what you learn on leading email providers such as Aweber and Getresponse so you can eventually put them as part of your packaged services.
If you’re interested in upskilling, there are course content dedicated sites such as Coursera to help you out. They have both free and paid learning modules.
Print on demand
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- Shirts, mugs, caps
The best print-on-demand sites include Printful, Printify, CustomCat, Redbubble, and JetPrint.
If you’re an artist, you can create your own designs but if that’s not your jive then you can simply outsource the task to a designer via the freelancing websites we’ve listed above. Consider this a good investment if the ROI is higher later on when you sell the designs on basically any item you can think of!
Social media
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- Tiktok
You can begin offering social media management services and the creation of posts plus scheduling for all the major platforms out there. This is one of the easiest to break into because everyone’s already exposed to social media and there’s little training needed to start.
You can also become community managers or ad managers. Facebook and LinkedIn even offer free training materials on how to efficiently use their platform.
Youtube
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- Achieving your first 1000 subs
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- Tools to use
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- Creating your first video
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- Youtube optimization
We feel like this should really be under the influencer and social media section but Youtube is king on its own. It’s the second most used search engine next to Google, and millions earn actual money through AdSense if you have a large enough following or subscriptions.
You can use external tools like vidIQ or TubeBuddy to help you optimize your experience and serve great analytics for growth. Otherwise, Youtube’s own analytics capability is already very superb.
Best practices include providing great awe-inspiring thumbnails, keyword laded tags and titles, and enticing videos that capture and retain your audience. It’s also important to network with like-minded individuals.
Ecommerce
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- Dropshipping
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- Dropservicing (instead of actual products, you become a middleman for digital service providers)
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- Digital products
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- Amazon (books/kindle, and seller central)
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- Etsy (handmade, art &crafts, artisanal):
If you’re a creative soul and want to turn your passion into profits, Etsy might be the perfect niche to explore!With its thriving community of buyers and sellers, Etsy offers a fantastic platform to showcase your artistic talents and make money while doing what you love.
Starting an Etsy shop is a relatively easy and low-cost way to start a business. You don’t need a physical storefront; you can manage your shop anywhere with an internet connection
- Etsy (handmade, art &crafts, artisanal):
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- Facebook marketplace (sell anything to your neighborhood)
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- Stock photo sites — Unsplash, Getty, iStock, Pexels
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- Custom baked goods
The eCommerce boom particularly dropshipping may have died down in recent years but it’s still profitable no matter the market or country you’re operating from. Even just knowing how to manage eCommerce shops regardless of platform (Amazon, BigCommerce, or Shopify) is going to help you sell services relating to it if you want more money.
Real Estate
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- Rentals/Airbnb:
You don’t have to be super rich to be able to acquire your own real estate and make money from it. You just need a clear plan.
We published an article, where we walk you through some steps and tips on how to earn from real estate and find customers swiftly!
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- house flipping
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- Space rent out
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- Sublet
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- Rent out your car
The rent out your (insert personal property here) hype may have been fueled by Airbnb back in 2008 which was even inspired by the more generic “couch-surfing” trend in the early 2000s but 20 years later, the hype continues.
Both companies are now available globally and have spawned hundreds of other “rental” types of eCommerce transactions for anything like your parking space, your car, even just your yard, and extra space at home you can spare for a day or two.
All this is made possible by the internet of course with their own dedicated apps so anyone can book your space on the go.
In-person Services
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- Taskrabbit
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- Thumbtack
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- House Sitting
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- pet sitting
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- queueing
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- Craiglist
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- MTurk
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- Removals
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- Uber
In the sharing economy, you can share your expertise (or a fraction of your time) to do just about anything under the sun. In Japan, you can even hire people to do nothing for hours.
You can swap books, share your bike, fund projects using crowdsourcing, provide tours, and help with simple tasks like gift wrapping or waiting in line.
The only thing hindering you is your creativity. This is not a passive avenue though as you actually need to be present doing these simple to complex tasks on-site or wherever you’re needed.
Testing
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- site tester
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- product tester
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- experience tester
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- Websites to use utest, TryMyUI, TestingTime, UserTesting
These microtasks are often easy to do as they’re really quick so you can’t usually expect that it will provide a full-time income. Do this when you have lots of spare time on your phone or computer.
You basically either train AI bots such as the ones you complete whenever you sign in on some websites (captcha which images are motorcycles) OR test a newly built website’s UI (user interface) and UX (user experience) so they’re free from bugs before launching.
The goal is to become lab rats (not literally) to help launch digital experiences and websites for every global customer.
Teach Courses
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- Teach
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- Mentorship
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- Consultancy
If you’re already an expert on certain subject matters with years of experience behind your back, trying your luck in the course creation world is a fun way to monetize your specialty.
The good thing about this is it’s so easy to begin, you just need to invest time in creating videos about your expertise, make it easy to follow, create rules and to-dos so they become actionable, and rake cash even when you’re not physically teaching.
You won’t trade your time for this one once the course is set up somewhere. You can choose all-in-one platforms like Thinkific or Teachable and or build your own via WordPress. Costs to start and maintain are low. Just buy a domain, access platforms, and upload videos (you can use Youtube!).
The tech part is very user-friendly and you can start small by sending it over to a few friends and grow by word of mouth. Otherwise, spending on some paid ads will do you good.
Flipping
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- Furniture
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- Houses
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- ANYTHING
The main idea behind this side gig is to acquire properties (digital or not) for cheap, do a makeover and sell it for 3x or more. This is flipping in a sense but when it first came to prominence in the 90s it was just really to make a quick buck out of properties. When reality tv shows like Extreme Home Makeover made waves, so does house flipping became a household term.
You can flip any asset like cars, houses, furniture, or domains and earn quickly. The key here is finding targeted audiences who would most likely buy your flipped opportunities at the right cost.
Streaming
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- Audio podcasts
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- Gaming streams:
Are you an avid fan of Esports? Is playing online games your forte and passion?If yes, what if I tell you that this so-called hobby can also be income-generating?
E-sports is currently one of the fastest-growing segments of the industry. Its quick ascent to the hall of fame was compelled by the significant number of Esports audiences every year. Forbes revealed a list of the most valuable Esports companies in 2022. We cannot deny that many people from different walks of life are enticed by or drawn into the cyber world of gaming.
It’s probably because of the adrenaline rush, competition, wisdom, or fame that they are experiencing in the game.
- Gaming streams:
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- Music
The Pandemic that started in the 2020s has further boosted the already booming streaming industry which was spearheaded by Facebook in 2016 and even earlier by Periscope in 2015. (acquired by Twitter)
Livestreaming in essence was not started by Facebook or social media giants. The mother of all live-streaming channels was justin.tv (later on Twitch) which started as a one-man show featuring founder Justin who popularized the term “lifecasting” or storytelling in real time of actual live events happening to one’s life.
This trend later on applied to major events such as sporting events, political upheavals, and concerts. Basically, anything happening at the moment in real-time can be broadcasted even with just the use of a phone.
This industry is so young but its potential is over the moon. Content creators have found creative ways to monetize the platforms that some rake in thousands by just going LIVE (tying up e-commerce products or receiving some monetary gifts while doing what they love such as playing video games or doing interviews ala podcast).
.Influencers
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- Cameo
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- UGC
Influencing people to buy products was often the domain of marketers and branding strategists not until social media made it more accessible for even the common folk to become an “influencer”.
This niche is so new and still in its infancy that most references you can get about it dates mostly to just Facebook and other leading platforms. It’s because most influencers who had big followings started on social. They capitalized on this huge following to either sell merchandise (usually just done by big brands prior), or sell memberships, courses, actual products, and services.
There is no limit to what you can sell if you have the right amount of followers.
UGC on the other hand also is an offshoot of the influencer marketing revolution which stands for user-generated content. It’s not entirely a new concept as many radio and tv commercials have used this angle for decades.
The only difference now is that they’re not cultivated out of people, they are willingly provided by customers or are planned by influencers to look more natural so as to influence people to buy something when they see it on popular sites like Tiktok.
There are different levels of influencers according to SEO expert Neil Patel and pay varies to audience size.
Affiliate
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- Best affiliate networks to find
According to Shopify, the best networks that are active globally include Rakuten (the Japanese Amazon equivalent), ShareASale (worth billions and connected to AWIN Group (the biggest CPS or cost-per-sale network in North America), and Clickbank.
Should you decide to become an affiliate, your main role and goal are to ultimately gain sales by promoting products or services by brands/companies signed up to the networks above. You are usually provided your own custom affiliate link so whenever a real sale happens, they can track it on your account and you get paid commissions.
The best method of getting more sales is list building, social influencing, and paid ads.
Do you think we missed a side gig you can enjoy this 2023? Send us a message or comment below!
