5 Best Side Hustles You Can Start Now

We all could do with some extra cash… here are some ways to earn it.

The 21st century is expensive. Extremely expensive, in fact, to a point where it’s getting harder and harder to live comfortably off of a day jobs salary. Sometimes it would just be nice to have a little extra money, say a couple hundred or thousand dollars a month.

A lot of people crave this extra cash, but never really know how to go about attaining it. Well lucky for you, the internet revolution has opened up many doors to possible side hustles, where you can earn a very respectable amount while lounging at home on your couch.

1. Instagram Theme Pages

This side hustle is terrific, and currently actually one of my favorites. For this, to work, you need to set up an Instagram account targeting a specific niche, preferably one with a broad audience, and one that is easily monetizable.

Once you have one, let’s say fitness, for example, you would go ahead and find other pictures on fitness in this niche, and simply repost them on your account (always remember to give the original owner credit though). The original owners of the pictures are usually very honored and thankful to be featured on other pages, so as long as you give them credit, your good to go.

You need to continue to work on growing your Instagram following (probably posting at least once per day) until you have reached about 10,000 followers. What follows is where the money starts loading in, and there are two paths you can take to monetize your account.

The first way is the easiest, as once you have reached that follower level, you will start getting offers by other companies to feature their ads in either your feed or your story (You should figure out a flat fee for this, based on your account size).

This is the easiest way to make a couple of hundred bucks, or even thousands, depending on how much you post. Still, you want to make sure not to overload on the advertisements, as it can also work against you if your following perceives you as a total sellout and then unfollows.

The second way to make money through Instagram theme pages is much harder, but therefore also has a much higher possibility for return. This way is called dropshipping.

Dropshipping is an order fulfillment method that does not require a business to keep products in stock. Instead, the store sells the product, and passes on the sales order to a third-party supplier, who then ships the order to the customer. — BigCommerce

This method requires you to find a product in your niche, find a wholesaler who sells that product (I would highly recommend Alibaba ), create a website around that product (preferably using Shopify), and then creating an ad that you can then place on your theme page.

I know that it might seem quite complicated at first glance, but it seriously isn’t, and I would highly encourage you to continue researching this type of business model as you can find some great youtube videos that go more in-depth on the subject.

The only downside is that you probably won’t be seeing any money until a couple of months after you started since you still need to grow your page, once you have accomplished that, though, its a big money maker. There is also no overhead which ups the pros again as you can easily do this on the side of your day job without feeling like your taking a significant risk.

2. E-Books

Publishing a book used to be a huge ordeal that necessitated you to get accepted by a publishing house that would then sell your book, taking a massive cut. The modern era has, however, revolutionized the publishing of books and has made it easier than ever before.

Self-publishing has been around for about a half a century but is only really picking up steam now, where anybody, anywhere, (who has access to the internet) can write and publish a book as an e-reader or hardcopy.

The great thing about this is that you once again have little to no overhead, especially if you use Amazon’s self-publishing program, which I would highly recommend for a beginner.

Not only that, but it is also a very lucrative sector, as you can earn up to 70% royalties on your books, which is much more then you could ever dream of in traditional publishing. Amazon has also reported paying out $220 million to its authors a few years back.

I also know quite a few people who make a couple of hundred dollars a month off of their Amazon books with giving them little to no promotion. This might not seem like a lot, but given that you could write multiple books, and that it is totally and completely passive, it is very lucrative.

I know what you might be thinking, though, ‘this isn’t passive because you have to write an entire book and who has time for that.’ Well, it’s not that big of a hassle as one makes it out to be.

You’re not writing the next bestselling New York Times ranking novel, so don’t stress out about it. Remember, this is an Amazon e-book, so nobody is expecting to find a literary masterpiece. They just want an enjoyable read.

It doesn’t have to be very long either and can be whatever genre you like, fiction, non-fiction, whatever rides your boat. If you love to write and want to try working on a more significant project, give it a go, and see what transpires.

3. Freelancing Platforms

People have started becoming busier and busier and getting more and more things to do. That is why they outsource services, which has aroused a boom in the freelance world. People are getting hired all over the place to accomplish the tasks which they are specialized in.

For example, if you love to write, you could start freelance writing for clients who need you to write blog posts for them because they either don’t want to or think you could do it better.

Starting your freelancer journey also does not need to mean that you’re building an entire website to get clients since this new market gave birth to a whole array of freelance platforms.

These platforms take care of most of the nitty and gritty of the freelance world, which includes creating your website and finding clients for you. There are some pretty fantastic programs out there, including Fiverr, which is great if you just want to dip your toes into the freelance waters, as it is a little less professional, and Upwork which is for those who want to get real serious real fast with this business.

The first step is to find out which skill of yours you want to be utilizing. There are a lot of options, including:

• writing
• drawing
• photoshop
• digital marketing
• design
• animation
• programming
• many more

Once you have decided on which one you’ll be using, take a moment to think of the fitting service. For example, if you’re skill set is writing you’ll offer to write a blog post if it is animation you’ll offer to animate something, and so on. It’s pretty straight forward.

Now you can go ahead and create an account and set everything up, on either one of the platforms listed above, or another one that you have heard about and want to use. It might take a while for your first order to come in, as people will be quite apprehensive of your offer since they see no reviews.

Therefore, make sure you are giving your clients much more then what they paid for, especially in the beginning, so that you can get some positive reviews that will boost your business.

Once you’ve established a good portfolio of orders and positive reviews, you can go ahead and heighten your price slowly and gradually, throughout a couple of weeks or months, until you have reached a satisfying amount. It all goes uphill from here, as your client list will rise with your ratings.

I am a big fan of this option since you get to use a skill that you love doing a lot, and can thereby create value for your clients.

4. Online Courses

We’ve all seen the ads. A guy is standing in front of a Lambo, explaining how if you give them money, they can make you rich. Well, there is a reason why you see so many of these ads, it’s not just to show off, but it just works exceptionally well. These people are earning fortunes because of their courses, and you can too.

Now I’m not saying that you have to offer a get rich quick course, or use these scummy tactics and be like everyone else. Instead, find a field where you seem to hold some sort of authority. One where you know you can bring an actual value to your viewers, and then invest in building this course. It doesn’t have to be very long or anything, but you do need to give your viewers as much as you possibly can in the class.

This method is very similar to the e-book in the aspect that you will need to invest a lot of your time (maybe also money) up front, but the real gains will then be made passively after the product is finished with no more additional costs. Its a straightforward business model, and it works.

The online education industry is growing rapidly and is said to reach a worth of $319 billion by the year 2025. So yeah, you’ll probably want to consider hopping on this bandwagon while you still can.

There are many things that you could teach online, including:

• business
• design
• photography
• marketing
• It & Software
• personal development
• health and fitness
• music
• among many others

Once again, if you do not want to build an entire website, I would recommend taking a look at the many options for platforms offering to host your course. This includes the likes of Skillshare, Udemy, and any other that you find fit.

Knowing that you were able to aid and benefit lots and lots of people is an indescribable feeling. You don’t want to miss out on it.

5. iPhone Reselling

The final method requires a definite starting capital of at least a couple hundred bucks, but it is also the most straightforward and surest way to make money.

The business model is simple; all you have to do is buy iPhones off of someone from some e-commerce platform like Craigslist for about 30% less of its actual value (you can research this by finding how much it would cost on eBay).

You might think this is insane, but trust me, there will be people who are either desperate enough or just don’t know better, especially when you offer them the money in cash.

Once you have the phone, you can place it onto eBay upping the price by about $100-$150. This one phone won’t be insanely profitable, but once you have one, it’s not much of a hassle to get a whole bunch of them. Always handling a bunch will ensure you some nice profit, making this much more straightforward than the previous ways, since the more you buy, the more you sell, the more you make money.

It’s a linear equation.

The misconception that I hear the most is that you need to be an engineering genius to step foot into this business since you’ll need to fully repair, remodel, and redesign all of the phones. This simply just isn’t true, as I mentioned above you can make great money with perfectly good phones. If you are good at repairing phones, sure, go ahead and go for it as you will earn even more. For the average Joe, though, let’s just stick to regular flipping for now.

It also does not have to be iPhones, but I would recommend it, since theirs a lot of demand, but be aware that this is just my biased opinion.

It also doesn’t even have to be phones that you need to be flipping since I just tend to find this the most accessible market to get into. If you are a big sneakerhead, you can go ahead and try it with shoes as I have heard some tremendous success stories from those as well. Anything else will also do, as long as you know, there is a market for it and a high enough demand.

I hope that at least one of the methods above has inspired you to start working on your dream of a financially stable future. If you are still unsure, I would highly incentivize you to continue researching more in-depth into the above topics so that you can understand more of how they work.

Once you know what you want to do, the hardest part is doing the work, as in finding time for it. There are so many excuses you can give yourself, but you need to make sure that you don’t.

Most people who have complained to me that they just ‘don’t have any time’ were the ones who spent their evenings relaxing in front of the television. This is understandable, but if you want to grow a side hustle next to you’re day job you’re going to need to sacrifice things like that.

Trust me that it will be immensely rewarding, not just financially, but emotionally as well.

You got this!