Side Hustles For Dummies. Alan R. Simon

Lori’s hours working in a mall clothing store were cut way back. Fortunately, she kept her job because the store also has an online presence, and Lori was able to work from home packing and shipping orders for the store’s suddenly booming online business. But instead of working 40 hours a week, Lori was now working only about 20 hours a week, sometimes even less.

      Unlike Cindy, Sandy, or Miguel, Lori doesn’t have any particular area of interest to turn into a side hustle. Still, she wants to — actually, she needs to — earn some extra money to supplement her weekly pay, which is now about half of what it used to be. Fortunately for Lori, many of the gig-economy delivery-oriented jobs went sky-high in popularity as people hunkered down in their homes. She signed up with Instacart and soon began spending about 20 or 30 hours a week shopping for groceries and other goods and then delivering those products to people’s homes.

In Lori’s case, you know exactly what she’s doing for her side hustle: working as an independent contractor for a gig-economy company, doing shopping and home delivery. But what about Cindy? Or Sandy? Or Miguel? You know that Cindy and Miguel are interested in bartending as their respective side hustles, while Sandy wants to do something related to sports memorabilia. But exactly what kind of side hustles will they wind up doing?

      

Cindy, Sandy, and Miguel all fall into the first of the two main side-hustle areas: choosing some topic that’s interesting to them as the foundation for their respective side hustles. They need to work their way through the progression of decisions covered in this chapter, and so far they’ve only reached Step 1: selecting a topical area.

      Lori’s side hustle falls into the second area. She’s simply looking for some sort of flexible side hustle that doesn’t require any particular skill or passion, but from which she can still earn money above and beyond her regular paycheck.

      

Even if Lori’s hours at the mall hadn’t been cut, she could still head down this second side-hustle path. In fact, after businesses began reopening, the mall clothing store where she works — which, fortunately, was able to stay in business — increased Lori’s in-store schedule back up to 40 hours per week. Does Lori need to quit her Instacart side hustle? Absolutely not! She may scale back the number of hours she signs in and does shopping and delivery; or maybe she’ll keep the same level of Instacart activity but do more on the weekends and when she’s not working at the mall than she did when her day-job hours were cut.

Figure 2-1 illustrates the two main side-hustle “families” along with some great examples of specific side hustles for each one. Note, though, that Figure 2-1 only includes a small number of examples of specific side hustles. Plus, Figure 2-1 only includes the topical areas, not how to flesh out those subjects or topics into specifics, as you’ll see in the next section.

FIGURE 2-1: The two main side-hustle families.

Running with Your Side-Hustle Idea

      Choosing a topical area of interest for your side hustle is only the first step. You then need to add substance and detail to your first idea and decide what exactly you’re going to do for your side hustle. You might do one or more of the following:

       Perform some sort of service on a contract basis.

       Sell some type of product, and maybe make the product as well.

       Build online content to provide information.

       Build online content to monetize yourself.

       Monetize an asset.

       Take on a part-time job as your side hustle.

      Cindy and Miguel have both decided that a bartending-related side hustle is around the corner. Cindy decides that she’s going to do some bartending on the weekends for private parties. Miguel, however, decides to create a series of videos that he’ll upload to either YouTube or TikTok.

      Contracting to perform a service

      Many side hustles involve performing some kind of service, such as:

       Doing hair, nails, or makeup for other people

       Doing a little bit of part-time plumbing, electrical work, or other skilled handyman-related tasks

       Walking dogs, doing pet-care visits during the day, or staying overnight at someone’s house for pet sitting

       Helping people pack their household goods and do a local move

      Many gig-economy side hustles are service-related:

       Using your personal vehicle to provide ridesharing

       Shopping for and delivering groceries

       Delivering restaurant meals to people’s homes

For many service-oriented side hustles — grocery shopping and delivery or pet sitting, for example — you don’t need to make a significant upfront financial investment. Even if you’re providing, say, local moving services, you can still get into the side-hustle game without shelling out big bucks for a box truck large enough to move a household’s worth of furniture and boxes. You can set your side-hustle business up where every time somebody hires you, you head to Hertz, U-Haul, or some other place that rents moving trucks by the hour or by the day, and bill your customers for the cost.

      Cindy has decided that she’s going to be a weekend bartender, mostly for home parties. She may need to purchase a few supplies to have on hand — a couple of bottle openers, a few corkscrews for wine, and maybe some drink stirrers — just in case the place where she’s bartending doesn’t have what she needs. But for the most part, Cindy’s side hustle involves performing some specific service — bartending, in her case — for some defined period of time.

      Selling products (and maybe making products as well)

      

When it comes to selling products for your side hustle, there are typically two different paths you can take:

       Buying products from manufacturers or wholesalers

       Making your own products that you’ll then sell

      No matter which product-sale path you choose, chances are, you’ll need to make a larger investment in your side hustle — both initially and on an ongoing basis — than you would if you were instead doing weekend bartending like Cindy or doing ridesharing through Uber or Lyft. Make sure your side hustle business plans (see Chapter 4) take these financial considerations into account!

      Tasha and Breanna both absolutely love fashion, and both are intensely interested in starting some sort of side hustle. Tasha decides that she’s going to provide personal-shopping services, helping other people choose stylish clothes and accessories to fit their budgets. Basically, Tasha will be providing contract services — the same side-hustle family as what Cindy will be doing for her bartending gigs.

Breanna, on the other hand, is thinking bigger. She wants to build a website that she’ll use to sell women’s clothes and fashion accessories. She’ll find the right suppliers for print T-shirts, blouses, pants, skirts, denim jackets — you name it! Then she’ll put their products on her website