The side hustle culture has again gained traction with the boom in the skill-based economy due to the Coronavirus pandemic.
People have learned that one revenue stream is not enough and also that they need not have another job or business to make money on the side.
You can literally trade the skills you currently have and make enough money for your survival. The skill-based economy is a boon for both employers and employees.
A side hustle might or might not pay enough for you to become rich, but it will give you enough that you can get yourself off the ground and move towards something better.
Today, we’ll be telling you about the five best side hustles that anyone can start from their home with little to no investment and make those extra bucks.
We’ll be taking the help of Nick Loper, Chief Side Hustler, at SideHustleNation.com to help us tell you the five best side hustles ideas.
5 Best Side Hustles
While side hustles might look easy, there’s a reason why they call them “hustle.” Almost every side hustle will require you to invest time and skill. So refrain from thinking of them as easy money or a replacement for your day job.
However, they’re a great source if you’re trying to generate extra cash so that you can invest more and create generational wealth.
So without further ado, let’s begin with the first of five best side hustles.
1. Service-Based Business
One of the most common paths that most of the 400 Side Hustle Show guests started with is a service-based business. That’s not necessarily where they ended up, but that’s how they started.
I know you’ll be trading your time for money, and that’s not what a lot of individuals want from a side hustle. But with a service-based business, you get the advantage of having low overheads, you can start with the skills you currently have and with the network you already got.
All you have to do is figure out what problem you can solve and what kind of client you can solve it for.
One of the most popular areas in service-based businesses would be in the virtual assistant niche.
The virtual assistant industry is blowing up, especially in light of covid with everybody working from home. And this work from home culture is here to stay along with the need for virtual assistants.
But virtual assistant is not the only service. There are countless skills you can offer as a service. Anything that you picked up from your day job or skills that you’ve picked up over the years.
Don’t worry if you can’t think of any skill that you can currently offer as a service. Many side hustles require a skill set that can be easily learned in a few weeks. For example, you can learn basic graphic designing in a month.
Some examples of services that you can provide for decent income are online English lessons, graphic designing, social media management, freelance writing, video editing, etc.
Your services need not necessarily be online. If you’re comfortable and there are opportunities in your local area, you can provide offline services too, such as lawn mowing, pool cleaning, child care or pet care, and many more.
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2. Affiliate Marketing
Second on the list is something that a lot of people might have already heard of and many might have even tried.
Affiliate marketing takes a good amount of effort, but it is literally one of the most lucrative side hustles that have the potential of out-earning your day job.
A great example of this is one of the Side Hustle Show’s recent guests, Tammy Smith, who started an affiliate site one year ago called FitHealthyMama.com and roped in $20k in revenue just in the holiday season.
Yes, she had to create a website, put up a lot of blog posts to start ranking on Google before making her first buck, and that is something that comes with the affiliate marketing business.
You’ve to put a ton of time and labor upfront that you’ll not be getting paid for, but it is something that can scale down the road and become a cash cow for you.
The biggest advantage of affiliate marketing is that you’re not trading your time for money as opposed to a service-based business. That means once you drop an affiliate link that is working, you’ll be making money as long as people are clicking on it.
Also, Google is not the only platform where you can do affiliate marketing. There are many platforms that help you reach a wide variety of audiences, such as Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.
In fact, YouTube is far better than Google or any other platform when it comes to affiliate marketing because it doesn’t necessarily care how many subscribers your channel has, when your domain was established, or what authority you have.
3. YouTuber
It has to be on the list because nothing is better than YouTube if you’re trying to make money on social media.
YouTube is the biggest search engine after Google, but it is much easier to rank on it as compared to Google. It also pays you for the higher views you have, and it is far more easier to build an audience and authority on YouTube.
The biggest advantage with YouTube is it has this viral element where you can start showing up in the sidebar and suggested videos, which hugely impacts your reach.
You don’t have to burn out yourself trying to figure out the long game of SEO and ever changing search algorithms. So YouTube is especially great for genuine content creators.
Again, it is a slow process growing on YouTube, just like Google, and you’ll have to put in the speculative effort up front where you’re not getting paid, but hopefully, something starts to spin in your favor.
4. Email Newsletter
We’re seeing a huge resurgence in email newsletters from companies like the Skimm, the Hustle, Morning Brew, and tons of others.
Newsletter as a side hustle is still not very mainstream, and you can use that to your advantage by being one of the first few movers.
Email is still not thought of as a content consumption platform but just think about how many times you open your email a day. Many people love reading newsletters from their favorite people and websites.
The model that Nick likes to consume as well as use is the curated model, meaning you send the best pieces of content summarized in a particular niche. For example, here are the 3 best articles I found on personal finance this week.
It’s a huge value to readers because you’re cutting through the clutter and offering only the best to them, and it’s great for you because you’re not writing any primary content by yourself.
The best part about a newsletter is it can become a part of people’s daily or weekly habits. Over time, as the audience grows, you can monetize with affiliate products, advertising, or you got people paying attention to you, so you can build up your own products and services.
Some people are also going into the realm of paid newsletters with tools like substack these days, which is awesome because you don’t need any affiliate marketing, advertising, or anything else. People directly pay you to consume your content.
If you’re choosing a niche that you’re already neck-deep into, then it becomes 100 times easy for you to curate content because you’re anyway already consuming a ton of content in that niche.
There is no lack of information out there. It’s just the lack of time. People who put the time and energy into finding the right information and putting it in of the right people are the ones who can actually create and grow a following.
5. Print on Demand
Print on demand is another popular side hustle that doesn’t require you to trade your time or skills for money and has huge earning potential.
It is nothing new. Sites like cafe press have been around since the early days of the internet. But what is new is some powerful syndications like quality shirts and quality materials.
You can do this through Merch by Amazon, Redbubble, Printify, Etsy store, teespring, or any platform that you prefer.
The best thing about print on demand, or e-commerce in general, is you’ve to put major efforts just one time in the beginning, and then your income is mostly passive.
You can build your own following on social media and then sell your art to them, or take advantage of Amazon, Redbubble, and Etsy’s built-in search engine.
All you have to do is come up with a clever saying, original artwork, or if that’s too boring, then some trending memes. Anything that looks cool to have on a t-shirt will sell.
Other Side Hustle Ideas
Those were the 5 best side hustles that you can start from the comfort of your home. But this is just scratching the surface.
There are hundreds of side hustles out there and countless ways to make money. If you’re interested in learning more about side hustles, then SideHustleNation.com is the place to be.
If you’re interested in passive income, then nothing is more passive than investing and watching your money grow. To learn the secrets of investing and money-making, click the button right below.
