With nearly a limitless possibility of side hustle ideas, picking a side hustle that works for you can be challenging. With these online lists, they have tons of ideas but do not consider what you are already doing during your day-to-day life.
Side hustles are a great creative outlet, a way to make extra money, and lets you develop new skills. However, picking the wrong one can lead to you abandoning the project and beating yourself up for not “sticking with” something that you would never like long-term anyway.
There are a few quick notes on side hustles in general before getting into finding your perfect side hustle.
Remember What a Side Hustle is
As much fun, lucrative, and fulfilling a side hustle can be, remember it is meant to be something done on the side. If you have obligations like a 60+ hour week, raising kids, and maintaining your house – a time-intensive side hustle will only detract from your life, not add to it. Because your side hustle becomes another thing “to do” which will detract energy away from the other, sometimes more meaningful, times in your life.
The side hustle has to work with you, and the schedule you realistically have, not the one you would like to have.
I am all for working hard to build your better life, but I am not a fan of overloading yourself to get there, because this strategy leads to burn-out, fatigue, and overall lower life satisfaction.
Pick a side hustle that compliments your life and enhances it.
Do Not Be Afraid to Start Your Side Hustle
Fear of failure is a common reason why people do not start their side hustle. Another is they want their idea to be perfectly executed on the launch. That was even what was holding up this blog until I figured out I just needed to start my dream project!
Quick Aside: See the quote that started this blog here!
Approach your side hustle with a growth-mindset that helps you realize that starting your side hustle is a great opportunity well worth the occasional hiccup.
Also, people have been where you are. 45% of working Americans report having a side hustle. That means 70 million people are already out there side hustling. You aren’t alone. You can learn and lean on an extensive community to help you get where you want with your side hustle.
Your Side Hustle will not be Lucrative for a while
Dreaming of making millions overnight when launching your blog, YouTube channel, freelance services, book, or making the next great gadget is very common. Do not worry, I am guilty as well.
In a comprehensive study by Nick of sidehustlenation, he found that the average side hustle brings in $1,122 a month, but the median is just $200 a month. Making $200 a month means some extreme outliers are raising that number, but most people are making an extra $200 a month.
Considering the average side hustler works on their business 11-16 hours a week, that comes to about $16-23 an hour. That isn’t even including the time when you are working “for free” getting your product ready, planning your marketing strategy, and doing all the necessary research.
Don’t get me wrong, extra money is extra money that can be used to alleviate your stress and help to build more time wealth into your life. If you do make a lot of money quickly with your side hustle, that is amazing! I just don’t want you to think making tons of money right away is normal and then you abandon your dream project when it doesn’t happen.
What to look for when picking your Side Hustle
Based on the above points, your side hustle has to be something you like doing for free because while you are getting it off the ground and for the first few years, you will be working for close to free. Your Side hustle has to be something you are so excited about you to overcome the fear of failure. Your Side hustle also has to compliment your lifestyle.
It can’t be something that feels like a “to-do” or something you overly procrastinate on. See how to overcome procrastination with this post!
Luckily, with the gig economy, access to online resources, and nearly limitless earning potential, starting a side hustle that works for you has never been easier!
Questions to ask yourself for picking your Side Hustle
1. What is Your Time Availability?
Not all side hustles require the same time commitment. Ask yourself how much time you are willing to commit to working your side hustle each week. Consider the time it takes to build the foundation of your product and then all the time for weekly maintenance.
For example, when I was first getting this blog put together, it probably took 20-25 hours a week for a handful of months to learn how to get the website built, designed, and figure out the branding. Today if I was to only focus on content creation and growth, the weekly maintenance is about 10-15 hours, plus whatever other time I choose to optimize the site.
Some side hustles like creating a product take possibly hundreds of hours of up-front research, design, and production. Once the product is built and advertised, when there are orders and a fulfillment pipeline, it might only take 4 hours a week to handle the side hustle.
Check your time availability and make the side hustle work with your schedule, not the other way around.
2. Do you want to work for someone else?
With the explosion of the sharing economy, there are tons of ways to make extra money working for other companies. You can drive for Uber or Lyft, deliver for PostMates, do mystery shopping for big chain grocery stores, or walk dogs on Wag.
The benefit of these is the customers are already there. All you have to do is sign-up to be a contractor with these companies. You set your availability and get a set wage for how much you work.
Full Disclosure: I do not like to idea of side hustling for a company. It caps the amount of money you can make, and you aren’t learning the skills you want to develop. It also is not as lucrative as it might seem (car repairs and gas can add-up for rideshares), and it is all about doing errands on top of the errands you already need to do for yourself. I put it here as an option because you can start making money right away, but it isn’t a sustainable way to your side hustle.
3. What are Your Current Skills?
What skills do you already have?
Do you know how to code, take photographs, cook, design brands, paint masterpieces, write well, or any other skill? People are willing to pay you for your expertise.
You can build your brand and website, or use sites like Upwork, Fiverr, 99 Designs, or Social Media to find clients. You can code a website for them, sell them photography sessions, cook for them on a special occasion as a personal chef, design their brand book, sell them a fun art-work, and ghostwrite or edit posts for their website.
You could even design a course for sites like Udemy or write a book to cater to your audience to share your experience and teach others about your hobby or skill.
Chances are you have lots of skills that you could turn into profitable side hustles. As long as your work does not have a non-compete, you could even use your work skills to make money on the side. Grant Sabatier of Millennial Money worked at a digital design firm and designed websites for his clients outside of work. He made $300,000 from one client alone for designing their website – a skill he learned at work and fine-tuned in his own time.
4. What do you like to Do?
Granted, you can be very talented in a particular area, but if you don’t like doing that work – chances are you will not make that your side hustle. Side hustles take a lot of energy, excitement, motivation, and time. If every minute you spend working on your side hustle feels like a chore, no matter how lucrative, you most likely will drop it after a few months.
Your side hustle has to play into your interests. You will be working your side hustle in your free time. This means you will be waking up before everyone in the house to work on it early in the morning or burning the midnight oil staying up to fine-tune your work. Usually, before or after a full day of work and/or working on the weekends.
Being excited about your side hustle will ensure you have the intrinsic motivation to stick with your project.
5. Are there any skills you want to Develop?
What skills have you always wanted to develop but don’t have the opportunity to do during your day to day life? For instance, have you ever wanted to learn to draw or code? Maybe your full-time doesn’t offer the opportunity to work on those, but your side hustle could.
Developing the skills needed to be able to start selling to people will take a little longer than if you already had the skills, but if this is something you’ve always wanted to learn to do and find you want to make a business out of it, now is the best time to start! Life is a marathon, it is better to spend years doing something you like, and make money over the long run than do short sprints of trying different things which you inevitably will stop doing since they do not interest you.
Fortunately, it has never been easier to learn new skills! Just like the above points, people already know how to do what you want to learn and are willing to teach you. Start with free resources like YouTube videos or online guides. As you get more into the skills, look for well-reviewed classes, and books to dive deeper into the subject. You will be amazed at what you can learn online.
For instance, I learned how to do 7 magic tricks in one month and built a planted tank in 2 months with all I learned online.
Think of the skills you want to learn how to do and start investigating them today.
6. What is your Brand?
What do you want your career to look like? What is your brand outside of work? Having a side hustle can be a great way to develop your brand. If you pick a side hustle that aligns with your dream career, or at least in something you are interested in, you can develop skills outside of a typical 9-5 that complement where you are trying to go.
It makes your case for a career swap or promotion when you can point to a project that you’ve been working for several years, outside of work. That shows drive, self-reliance, entrepreneurial skills, and motivation that employers love to see out of potential candidates. Use your side hustle as an opportunity to boost your resume and personal brand.
7. What is your dream job?
Ask yourself these questions to help find your dream job!
It can be difficult to navigate to your dream job. Just like the above point, working on something akin to your dream job provides many benefits. You can see if you even like the job in the first place, and if so, you are already developing tangible skills and experiences you can talk to during the interview for that role.
8. What do you value?
What are your main values in life? Your side hustle should complement what you want to value in life.
For instance: I value continually learning new things, providing value, research, and turning my notes into easily digestible pieces of information. That is why running, growing, and writing for the blog is perfect for me!
There are other side hustles like selling domain names and working for Uber that I considered, but at the end of the day, they don’t feel like something I am passionate about. I know I wouldn’t be providing as much value for my time as with the blog.
By remembering what you hold as priorities, you can easier see which side hustles align to the life you want to be living, and what kind of value you want to provide to others.
Main Take-Aways
- Learning how to pick a side hustle that works for you takes some forethought to make it a project that truly excites you.
- Recognize that building your side hustle will take longer than you think and will not be as profitable from the start as you might believe. Pick a project that you think you can stick with for years.
- Take your long-term goals into consideration. Can your side hustle help you develop or fine-tune the skills you need to work towards your dream career?
Action Items
Make time this week to write down all of the side hustle projects you are considering. Then run through these questions. List the side hustles that fit what you want to do, and cross out those that do not work for you.
You might be surprised what gets cut, and what stays. That is completely fine and normal! Then research into the side hustle ideas that remain. Pick the one that hits the most of your criteria and start working on it this week. Do not let the fear of failure stop you from working on your dream project!
