I’ve Been Working From Home For 10 Years — Here are my Recommended Side Hustles for 2023.
It’s not print-on-demand or dropshipping. I would bet that you don’t know some of those.
Me: “I know what you’re thinking. With all those layoffs going on, a side hustle or an additional income stream wouldn’t hurt. Right?”
You: “Nope.”
Me: “Okay, wait. Let me try again. I know what you’re thinking. Working from home is much more comfortable, and you’ll be your own boss. That’s the dream, right?”
You: “Nope, I work remotely.”
Me: “What do you want exactly?”
You: “Nothing, I just want to know what you’ll say out of curiosity. Maybe it’s something I already do, or it’s something that I think to be extremely stupid. One thing you should know, the moment I read dropshipping, I’ll close this tab.”
Me: “…”
I’m the sort of person who likes to experiment online. If there’s a side hustle that someone is doing, I would always ask myself, “Can I do this? This could save me some time or allow me to retire early.”
Then I would test it out. Many of those “side hustles” you see online are mainly designed as article fillers to be able to have the title, “30 side hustles you need to try in 2023.”
Here’s what I’ll do. I won’t tell you a lot of side hustles, but I won’t tell you a few. Wait, let me count how many I actually want to talk about.
*counting*
I think I would want to talk to you about four of them. Does that work?
You: “Yes, thank you.” (The beauty of writing is that I can force you to say anything that I want you to, in my mind.)
You: “AL, I’m electing you to become the king of the world.”
Me: “Thank you, I’m honored.”
Alright, let’s cut this out and get to it. I will be going with the order of most exotic to least exotic.
PS — 96% of my time is invested in my newsletter (750k views and 12k readers); Here’s a link if you wish to become part of my network.
Number One — A Cohort with Maven.
I am not sure where I saw this initially, but I love their business model. Alright, let me elaborate.
You can host a course on udemy, right? Then sell it for $25 and wait to reach a thousand sales and earn a good $25,000.
But wait, Udemy takes 63% of that (Wait, how, in heaven’s name, is this number real? Gosh, is this even legal?)
Anyway, the concept is good as a passive income. But there is a company that’s innovating a bit in that area. Instead of just recording your course and passively earning $25k from it over five years, you could host a live cohort (sort of a live course).
This could be in one week or four weeks, up to you. But surely you’ll charge more than $25. That’s all not interesting — here’s why I like this business model.
Companies are reimbursing students for those cohorts. According to Maven, you could earn around $30k from your first cohort (Not bad.)
In terms of scalability, I don’t like it as much as udemy. But apparently, the world is moving towards receiving a realistic session that adds value compared to a passively recorded video.
It kind of makes sense. If the world has been promoting online pre-recorded courses for ten years, then it will sound interesting when you find an actively live online course or cohort.
But this “side hustle” per se has a few things you should know:
- It’s un-fakeable. If you’re not an expert in your field, let it go. You won’t be able to edit your live footage, remember?
- According to Maven, their current students keep returning to enroll in other cohorts, so you might not need as much promotion as you think.
At the start, however, they want to ensure you improve their balance sheet a bit and will ask you to get a few students or a lot of leads before they start recommending your cohort, which is achievable.
I haven’t tried or vouch for this company whatsoever. They have enough references on their website.
But are they faking the whole thing, and will be in a new series like Theranos in five years? I have no clue. I hope not, even though I would definitely watch the series.
Number Two — eBook through Gumroad
I just saw this on Medium over 61,415,245 times that I have to speak of it. I’m actually testing it out soon.
Gumroad is trending; I have no idea why. Courses and eBooks have been there for years. Why a startup would make it cool to sell your eBook, there is beyond me.
However, I’ve seen articles, and I’ve seen sales. Gumroad as a company is growing. The creators earned around $142 million in 2020, which was a 94% increase from 2019 (Definitely not bad.)
So I’ll be more experienced in this side hustle in a year or so to be able to tell you about my journey there. For now, let me guide you to another Medium writer who spoke about this out of personal experience.
I can’t confirm whether you’ll be able to earn on Gumroad because, frankly, I have no idea what you’ll be selling. However, investing in this platform from a business perspective is a good idea. They are growing.
Number Three — Selling Notion and Excel Templates
The moment I think I know what the world of side hustles has, I get surprised. I had no idea that the market of selling Notion templates could allow a Youtuber to earn over $1m.
I mean, seriously, Notion was just created like yesterday?
Of course, this is not accurate. I heard about Notion a year ago. However, Notion was released in 2016, six years ago.
Whenever a product trends, templates, and add-ons also trend. Let me give you an example, Envato market sells templates for all sorts of software like Photoshop and Microsoft Word.
Afr.com says Envato is valued at more than $1 billion. Given their templates and sales, it’s believable.
Notion, on the other hand, is growing like crazy as well. It’s reported that they currently have over 4 million users. It was around 1 million in 2020.
They’re a private company, and they’re not forced to disclose their user count. However, one thing is for sure — they are growing, and you should be investing in them if you can.
That could be by creating your own Notion templates if you don’t know how to learn.
Alternatively, Excel and Google sheets productivity templates are also on the rise. I would put this on the fact that we are in the age of speed. When everything is going very fast, every person needs a progress report of some kind.
Getting that through a template in software that they already know and use is a wise approach.
Number Four — Freelancing
I told you I’d head to the least exotic. This is one that I’ve been doing for over ten years, though (Gosh, I’m a dinosaur.)
People are making millions selling Notion templates, and I’m hustling to freelance on platforms.
Me: “Actually, that’s not true. I take my time in expanding to different platforms.”
You: “Of course, blah blah loser.”
Me: “Hey, HEY! I earned around $5k on Medium in February.”
You: “$5,000 on Medium vs. $1,000,000 selling Notion templates… You do the maths.”
Me: The beauty of writing is that I also have the ability to just silence you. Done.
You: “…”
Okay, if you’re interested in freelancing this year, here are the platforms I recommend.
1. Upwork and Fiverr
Upwork and Fiverr are, unfortunately, still dominant in this remote industry. They’ve become very complicated to try to fulfill the demands of the clients and the freelancers.
Actually, wait, let me tell you a funny story. I have a problem with Upwork, and I don’t use my account there. But never mind that. Some agency talked to me on LinkedIn and told me:
Agency: “Hey, AL, we heard about your problem with your Upwork account. We want to tell you that we can take control of the account, earn, and give you a commission while you do nothing.”
Me: “What? Even if, which is not true, this is legal, Upwork will figure out that you’re logging in from my account in another country and ban the account.”
Agency: “We will remotely access your account through a software called Team Viewer. You only have to power up your PC, and we’ll do the rest.”
Me: “…”
The only thing I could think of is — “things we do for money.” (I was rewatching Game of Thrones at that time.)
Alright, so Upwork and Fiverr are getting more competitive. But the demand from clients is also increasing. Hence, building a profile on both of them wouldn’t hurt you as long as you:
- Invest time in them.
- Never take them for granted as your sole income provider.
2. Medium and Newsbreak
I’m biased towards Medium because I’m a top writer here. I haven’t tried Newsbreak. So I can’t recommend or tell you not to use it.
All I’ll say about it is that you’ll need to be based in the US in order to use Newsbreak. Additionally, their focus is on viral content. While Medium just announced you could be a verified book author.
It’s as if Medium is focused more on the quality of writing while Newsbreak focuses more on having a wider reach.
You: “Super biased.”
Well, try them both and use whatever works for you. But I’m sure they both need persistence and dedication.
I don’t want to stop the conversation here. So comment with other side hustles that you think are modern and that you would recommend to the reader after you try them out.
I’m AL, a business consultant in Zurich, Switzerland. I believe in the power of delivering value to you, the reader. Follow me on various social media platforms if you’re interested in the value of my content.
