WHAT IS A SIDE HUSTLE

A side hustle is a means to make money outside of your main job or income. Having a side hustle can get you closer to your financial goals, allow you to spend on other things you want, or lessen your worries on your personal finances.

It can also serve as a backup source of income in case you lose your main job due to unforeseen circumstances. But for some people who were determined to get out of their 9-5 job, they were able to turn their own side hustles to full-time businesses.

So whether you are just looking for a side gig for extra cash or want to create a full-time business eventually, here are some of the side hustles that lead to the success of many entrepreneurs.

Are you someone who’s looking to start selling products online but don’t want to go through the hassle of learning how to do Facebook ads, YouTube ads, building your own website, and all that complexity? Then selling on Amazon might be a good fit for you.

Stephen Somers, —one of the successful entrepreneurs we interviewed in our Millennial Investing podcast show, has made a fortune selling products on Amazon. Somers is now the CEO and co-founder of Marketplace Superheroes, an 8-figure online education and services business that teaches people how to start and grow an online business selling simple branded products globally on Amazon.

Somers shared some of his learnings and tips on selling on Amazon.

“Your job is to figure out what people are already buying, low in competition products, and the supply is just not all that great on the platform. Come in and sell better versions of those products, a better offer, better listing, etc., and you sell that in multiple countries.”

Sell multiple products in multiple countries. “So you’ve got five products you sell in five countries, make five sales per day per product per country, average net profit of each product of $5, that’s $18,750 net profit with five items over a 30-day average month. And it’s just because you’re multiplying the markets up with a small number of products making a small number of sales.”

You might be wondering now if you can manage all these for just a side hustle.

Amazon has a feature called FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) which makes shipping convenient for sellers. It allows you to send some of your inventory to Amazon’s warehouses. They’ll hold it in stock, and every time you make a sale on Amazon, they ship it out on your behalf.

Given that Amazon offers tools and great accessibility features such as access to their clients, logistics, SEO, and social advertising, Somers recommends taking advantage of them as a seller. Leverage the data you can get from Amazon’s platform and research products properly.

Which types of products should you avoid selling on Amazon?

1. Trendy products. Interest on these products can go up and down easily. A good example of a trendy product was the fidget spinner. If you go to Google Trends and you look back over the last five years and you search “fidget spinner,” you can see it went up and it went down pretty much overnight.
2. Potentially hazardous products or those that contain harmful chemicals.
3. Products that are easily breakable, and/or sharp.

Which types of products should you sell on Amazon?

What we’re going for are long-tail products. What are those?

Long-tail products are what Somers describe as terms that are easier to tank for. One example is “seed box”. Compared to “bento box” that comes in different types, colors, and uses, “seed box” is more specific and has a lot less options for it. Customers looking for a bento box would have a harder time choosing from many bento box options than customers looking for a seed box.

It is a lot easier to get in front of the customers for long-tail products. Focus on these items that are boring, sustainable, will sell for a long time, or have sold for a long time.

How can you determine if a specific product is something you should consider selling? Listen to this discussion between Robert Leonard and Stephen Somers about researching products and markets for Amazon.

It is now very common for people to go straight online whenever they want to learn something new or level up their life skills, crafts, or hobbies.

For some of you who have expertise or passion on something, creating an online course about it might be worthwhile. Whether you’re someone who wants to sell their online courses as a side hustle or as a full-scale business.

Greg Smith, the CEO and Co-Founder of Thinkific, —a software platform that enables course creators and entrepreneurs to create, market, and sell their own online courses, started as a side hustler and has successfully launched and marketed his own online course. Smith was a lawyer back then. When he saw that his online course was doing more revenue than his practice as a lawyer, he turned it into a full-time business.

Do you have to be famous or an expert to create a course?

Smith believes that if you are a few steps ahead of someone in an area, you can definitely help them learn through your course. There are artists, musicians, farmers, and others who create courses and do exceptionally well.

Your course may not always do well on day one, unlike those famous people or businesses who already have an audience to launch their courses to. But with a little bit of effort, you can go and find that audience. One quick way to find your target audience is to find other people who already have an audience that might be interested in your course and offer them affiliate commissions.

“Don’t be so intimidated to think that if you’re not some PhD, or if you don’t have something on your wall that says you’re an expert in it, that you can’t teach.

You want to make sure that this is an area that you have some passion and some knowledge on and go start creating that education around it and continue to learn as you go,” Smith advised.

The demand for online learning is increasing especially due to the pandemic when it’s more convenient to learn on mobile or computer. The trend is just getting started so new course creators can dive in and find a niche they can serve really well with their courses.

Check out these tips on what makes an online course successful.

Ryan Scribner, a successful lifestyle entrepreneur, and YouTuber created his channel out of natural interest and passion for investing. His YouTube channel where he talks about stocks and investing now has 530,000 subscribers.

So if you are someone who’s passionate about something, you can also create a channel about it. There are tons of contents to do; covers of songs or instrument tutorials for musicians, painting process videos for artists, recipe videos for those who love to cook, and a lot more. Even the simplest things such as planting flowers in your garden get a lot of views from their niche audience.

While YouTube has billions of users, it takes time to build a solid audience and earn big enough ad revenue. Even Scribner started with a $4 ad revenue out of 200 hours of working on his channel.

It takes patience to grow your channel.

If you don’t have the extra time and energy to dedicate to it, YouTube might not be for you. On the other hand, if you’re getting started today, Scribner advises you to be patient and have a positive mindset about the statistics.

“You may think, ‘Man, this video sucks. It only got 500 views.’ Well, if you had 500 people standing in your front yard, you’d be like, ‘Holy crap! That is a lot of people.’

You just have to think about every single view as a person. Maybe you’re not thrilled with getting 100 views a month on your blog, or 100 views a month on your channel, but you’re impacting 100 people’s lives, and that’s substantial. And it’s only going to grow from there.”

Apart from ad revenue from the channel, you can also try affiliate marketing as a source of income. Know more about affiliate marketing below.

If you already have a blog, website, YouTube videos, or even a social media account, you may want to try affiliate marketing as an additional source of income.

What is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is the process by which an individual, called the affiliate, can earn a commission for marketing another person’s or company’s products and services.

This means you can earn money simply by recommending products and services that you personally love and use. You just need to reach out to companies with affiliate programs. And if your audience or network bought the product or availed of the service you endorsed, you’ll get a commission from that sale.

How much could you expect to earn from affiliate marketing?

The answer is it depends. Affiliate pay can vary among products and services. There are companies that may pay higher prices if a customer successfully makes a purchase because of you.

Ryan Scribner, —a successful lifestyle entrepreneur, YouTuber, and a well-known affiliate marketer shared some tips on doing affiliate marketing.

“My cardinal rule for affiliate marketing is I would not recommend a product or a service online that I wouldn’t recommend to my neighbor. The reason is that if I recommend something to my neighbor, and it’s crap, I’m literally just recommending it to make money. But it’s going to be pretty awkward when I check the mail because he’s not going to be very happy with me.

But a lot of people don’t follow that same kind of moral compass because they’ll recommend these products that are high-commission that aren’t a good fit for that person just to make money simply because it’s anonymous in a way.”

What is the most effective affiliate marketing content?

1. Comparison Content

According to Scribner, comparison content has been very effective on his channel and blog. These are reviews and comparisons of two or even three products. As it is very common for customers to research about the different brands of a product before actually buying one, having a comparison content puts you closer to the end of the customer journey wherein customers are most likely to buy.

2. Long-tail Searches

Another one is the use of long-tail searches. These are terms, phrases, or questions that usually don’t have much search volume, meaning only few people are searching for them.

What Scribner does is research on very specific questions people are searching for about the product or service of the companies he’s affiliated with. So, even though there are low search volumes for the searches, when you have many of them, they do add up to a substantial amount of traffic.

It takes work to run your own podcast show, you will have to spend more time on tasks like having a great script, researching, and editing audio.

If you’re willing to make these efforts, then podcasting is another good way for you to make extra income or even turn into a main source of income.

Stig Brodersen, host of We Study Billionaires— one of the most popular and most downloaded stock investing podcasts in the world, shared some of his lessons from the podcast business.

“I think one piece of advice I could give to someone interested in checking podcasting out first, and getting started, is to use your phone or get a $30 USB microphone. Get started and test it out.

Set up your own feed, it can be completely free. Make a lot of mistakes, and if you feel that this is something you want to do, if you really want to be serious about this, you can perhaps spend a bit more on the equipment and set up a new feed. Do it all over and take it from there.”

How does a podcast make money?

Advertising. You would typically need to reach a given amount of downloads before you become interesting to most brands. But even if you only have 100 or 200 downloads, you could still get something similar to a radio spot, and you can make money off that.

If you have other business and products to sell, you can promote them in your podcast show and start funneling sales for yourself. Another way is to do affiliate marketing.

Listen to the full discussion on creating a podcast career here.

Are you an expert on your career or passionate about your hobbies? You can capitalize on your skills and talents in starting your own side hustle.

For example, if you have a career in finance, you can offer financial services as a freelancer. Some creatives also earn some extra money through freelance work as graphic artists and accepting commissions. If you are a chef or someone passionate about cooking, you can make money off of uploading recipe videos on YouTube.

If you still lack key skills that you need to create your side hustle, now is the time to enhance your skills, or find other side hustles that do not need technical or creative skills.

There are plenty of free tools and resources out there that can make managing your business easier.

You can use social media to promote your business, build a community and keep in touch with your customers. A good old excel spreadsheet can go a long way in keeping track of your finances. There are also free and easy-to-use apps like Canva for your designing needs. You can also make a digital planner so it won’t be hard to keep up with your schedules.

Keep updated on the latest apps that you might need in managing your side hustle.

Having a full-time job plus a side hustle can be taxing if you don’t know how to manage your time. You wouldn’t want to get fired on your day job for using the company time for your own business. 

Dedicate an amount of time strictly for your side hustle. Allocating time will also help you stay focused. Eliminate distractions and other unnecessary activities. Use those times for your side hustle instead. Working on it for an extra 30 minutes during lunch, before or after you start your 9-5 job makes a big difference.

Creating a business plan can take hours, weeks, or even months. Your precious time could be well spent on other aspects of your business instead of creating a business plan that’s often wasted.

Why are some components of business plans not that important?

Successful entrepreneur and author Mike Michalowicz says that business plans have arbitrary components that are not rooted in realism. One example is the financial plan.

“When you’re starting a business, you plan, ‘In Year 1, we’re going to do like $500,000. In Year 2, probably $3 million. By Year 5, we’re a billion-dollar company. We’ll be the next Amazon…’ But we have nothing to base it on. The business doesn’t exist.”

Everyone has a plan going to war, but when the first bullet flies, everything’s out the window. That’s the idea of business too. There are many variables that can change and you have to adjust based on all those changing dynamics.

You’ll need something that’s dynamic and changes with your business as opposed to traditional business plans.

What do you want your business to be? The answer to that question should be specific.

This specific goal will keep you on the right track both in the long term and the short term. When making decisions on a daily basis, they should be consistent with moving you towards that vision / goal.

Mike Michalowicz shares his experience on having a clear goal. “In The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur, I talked about the concept called Tacking. Tacking is having a clear outcome with vision, serving that or moving toward the goal as best we can over a short time, usually in three-month increments, and taking intentional pauses every quarter to reassess: 

What happened last quarter? What competition has risen or collapsed? How are things changing? What do we need to do in this next quarter to move toward that vision?

Every quarter, we keep on realigning again and again to that vision.”

The hardest part is starting. Launching your side hustle may seem daunting as there are a lot of preparations to do.

One of Greg Smith’s advice is to get started. Set a deadline for yourself to get that product or service out to your market and try to sell it.

From that early experience, you can get the product-market fit feedback that you need in order to figure out if you’ve built the right thing for the right people. This will also give you an idea on what to improve on your product or service moving forward.

Michalowicz also explained the value of pre-selling. Start pre-selling your product or service to make sure that there’s an actual demand. Once you are able to sell them, go through with it and make improvements as needed.

One of billionaire Elon Musk’s secrets to success is thinking big and innovating.

And when you are starting out as a small business with money and network constraints, you’ll have many rooms for creativity and innovation. You have to make sure that your valuable resources such as money, space, equipment, and even time, are fully utilized.

“As we’re given less time or fewer resources, we become more focused on maximizing the utilization of those resources, and often, there’s innovation.” Michalowicz explained. “A business that can extract every ounce of value out of its resources continually will beat the competition.”

Farmers grow healthy pumpkins by carving out and cutting off the rotten pumpkins that could take away the nutrients and energy from the ones with potential to grow healthy. Michalowicz built on this practice to come up with the Pumpkin Plan.

What is the Pumpkin Plan?

The Pumpkin Plan is a strategy of protecting the strong and profitable clients while discarding the weak ones. As your business grows, the energy you spend on clients who are never satisfied, complain about everything, or threaten to give you bad reviews, is better spent on clients who love what you do, and will pay top-dollar for your products or services.

“Basically, it’s rooted in what’s called the Pareto principle, the 80/20 rule. 20% of your client base will likely yield 80% of your profitability. 20% of your products will yield 80% of the organization’s profitability.

And so, what we do is we become selective of our client base. We become selective about our offering. We start to narrow in on serving our best clients the best things, and we also have the courage of jettisoning the no good clients,” Michalowicz explained.

• Millennial Investing Side Hustles Starter Pack
• Building A Business On Amazon w/ Stephen Somers – MI095
• Blueprint For Entrepreneurship w/ Mike Michalowicz – MI043
• Side‌ ‌Hustling‌ ‌and‌ ‌Stock‌ ‌Investing‌ w/‌ ‌Ryan‌ ‌Scribner‌ – MI036
• Building A Successful Online Course and Start-up w/ Greg Smith – MI027
• Creating a Podcast Career w/ TIP Network Co-founder Stig Brodersen – SV039