Do you want to start a side hustle, but need some ideas to get started? Millennials are turning in their droves to the gig economy and side hustles, with 1 in 4 people now taking on multiple money-making activities at the same time. Gone are the days of a high paying job for life.
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Beyond the necessity to supplement stagnant wages, young people now demand the flexibility of a work life balance on THEIR terms.
Having a side hustle business outside of your normal job is a fantastic way to have fun doing a hobby you enjoy; and get paid to support your lifestyle at the same time.
So what makes a good side hustle? And what are some good side hustle ideas?
Thinking of an idea is challenging, but before that we need to be thinking of the right type of side hustle.
What Makes a Good Side Hustle?
We say that there are 3 types of side hustle. These are:
1) Pay By The Hour/Event
This is the “Trade Time for Money” type of side hustle, and the most common. It is also what most people think of when they think about side hustles.
Here’s some ideas for this type of side hustle:
- Host murder mystery evenings at your home
- Manage social media accounts for small businesses
- Mystery shopping
- Grow and sell plants
- eBay clear-out
- Dog walking / babysitting
- Private tutor / music lessons
- Londoner? Offer free tours – tourists expect to pay a decent tip each of £10 – £20
What’s good about the Pay-by-Event type of side hustle is that they are often simple to set up, you know roughly how much extra cash you’ll get each month, and there are plenty of ideas out there.
Whatever you are good at, you can spend your spare time doing it and getting paid for it.
The downside to this type of side hustle is that there is limited room for growth. You only have so much time in the day, especially if you are working alongside a full-time job.
2)100% passive side hustle
We’re not sure that these technically fit the definition of side hustle, but they are a way of making money outside of work – so we include them here.
Examples of 100% passive side hustles include:
- Rent out a room to a lodger / become an Airbnb provider
- Let a commuter park on your drive or garden
- Rent your garage out for storage
- Hire out the use of another asset you own e.g. a classic car or an expensive camera
These are much better types of side hustle as they take the time element out of it – if you can, set up one of these moneytrees first, and once they are ticking along without your input, you can turn your attention to a side hustle that requires your time.
This type of side hustle requires you to own assets, and to make them work hard for you while you do nothing.
Obviously not everyone can do this, but if you are lucky enough to have a foot on the housing ladder, getting a lodger is a simple and significant step you can take to make hundreds of extra pounds each month, tax free.
3) Business with Growth Potential
Finally, this type of side hustle is a true business start-up – you might expect to have an initial cash outlay, no profits for the first year or two, but thereafter could have unlimited growth – to the point where it’s making enough money for you that you can quit your day job.
This type of side hustle differs from something like a dog walking business, in that it has scalability in terms of the number of people it can reach.
A dog-walker can only walk so many dogs; a tour guide can only put on so many tours.
Examples of side hustle businesses that have scalability are:
- Start a YouTube channel, website or blog that offers value and helps people
- Write a book
- Graphic designer / Photographer / Music Samples creator – sell on sites such as AudioJungle
- Produce and sell an online course e.g. website development, car mechanic, cookery – whatever you’re good at, make a course to show others how to do it, and charge big bucks
- Investment Property business
Note that most of these are internet based. The reason so many people are able to make a living from the internet is that it is the purest and simplest tool to achieve scale.
We’re All Interconnected
Everyone in the world is connected the internet, meaning that your product or service has the potential to reach over 6 billion people.
Come up with a product that helps people or that entertains them, and a way of making sales passive, and you are onto a winner.
The web-based tutorials site Udemy is a place where you can upload a series of videos that you have filmed and packaged together as a course, which people can download and buy.
You create the course ONCE, then forget about it – an unlimited volume of the product can be downloaded without any further input from you, and a worldwide audience can see your product.
You have scalability of production and of audience reach.
What We’re Doing
This website is another example of a side hustle that can reach an unlimited number of people, and crucially we believe provides value.
In our YouTube videos, we aim to provide as much information on investment and finance topics as we can in as short a space of time, to educate, entertain, and help you become financially free.
In return, we hope our channel and website will grow over the years to reach a global audience, and act as another source of cash flow for us alongside our investment portfolios.
The key is that we are first and foremost doing something we enjoy and doing it for the right reasons – to help people. If you can genuinely help the masses, your business will grow.
Investment Property as a Side Hustle?
We include in that final list an Investment Property business.This lacks the scalability of an internet business but can grow from a handful of rental properties into a portfolio 50 strong, by reinvesting all profits.
We include it because it doesn’t require your time to manage (you should be using a property agent to manage your portfolio for you). Unlike an internet business however, it costs a lot more to set up.
Consider Your Schedule and Flexibility
When choosing a side hustle, you should ask yourself how much time do you have available, and what is your time worth to you? Are you willing/able to give more time as your side hustle grows?
Setting up a business will take a lot of time and commitment before you start to make serious money, while a Time-For-Money side hustle might be better suited for someone who needs an extra income now.
Conclusion
As you know, at MU we both love and crave passive income, but if we must give up some of our time, it should be for scalable income.
Therefore, we would always go for the second and third types of side hustle.
The 100% passive such as lodgers and renting out assets and setting up Businesses with Scalability, like what we’re doing with Money Unshackled.
We hope we’ve opened your mind to what a side hustle can be – it needn’t be just another time-for-money trade off like your day job. If done right, it could set you free.
What’s your side hustle idea? Let us know in the comments below.
