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Side Hustles That Actually Work

Side Hustles That Pay

Are there any? Of course there are. And don’t worry, I’m not gonna tell ya to go fill out surveys or recruit friends and family into an MLM that’ll be defunct in six months. And you won’t even have to start an OnlyFans, so keep your clothes on, Alicia. All right, so, first and foremost, you can’t go wrong with a service-based business. You literally go: What do I know how to do? And then you go do it for people for a fee. Ideally, online, for a decent hourly rate, right?

NEXT: Why This Is The Ultimate Side Hustle

So you could create thumbnails for YouTube creators; you could write blog posts for affiliate marketers; you could manage Instagram for a local business; you could do data entry for a big company; there’s bookkeeping, tutoring, travel planning, helping people with their resume, you get the idea. Whatever’s in your wheelhouse, chances are, someone somewhere’s willing to pay for it. And if you can’t find any buyers on your own, try a freelance marketplace like Fiverr or Upwork.

Then, to take that from side hustle to full-time income (and possibly beyond), what you can do is level up your skill set. Learn how to solve bigger problems. Like, okay, maybe you started off editing photos. Cool, you enjoyed it, made some money, your clients were happy with what you sent ’em, everything’s gravy, right? But what if you could earn exponentially more money for every hour worked? Guess what, you can. Just figure out how to alleviate a much more painful problem than someone simply needing a few photos tweaked.

Which, lemme just tell ya, the “big three” are gonna revolve around health, wealth, and relationships. For example, if you can sell a service that helps a new mom get her pre-pregnancy bod back; or help some dude get laid; or make a business owner a bunch more money? Well, you’re gonna be able to charge a lot more, aren’t ya? So invest some time, energy, and money into acquiring new skills in one of those areas, and then go nuts. Get client, overdeliver, collect testimonial, raise price, repeat.

Flexible Schedule Business

Now say, for some reason, you don’t wanna do a service-based side hustle. What else is there that actually works? Arbitrage. Just taking advantage of price differences. Which, technically, you could do even with services. Like you could sell a $5,000 website design package, outsource it for $3,000 to an actual pro, and pocket the difference, right? And that’s all fine and dandy if you wanna do that, but you can also do this with books, clothes, furniture, tools, cars; again, almost anything under the sun.

And the safest way to ensure you actually make a profit is to A) first sell your own junk, and then B) probably just head over to like Facebook Marketplace, search for stuff people are trying to give away for free, and then relist it on Facebook Marketplace but charge for it (you sly dog, you); or list it on eBay or Etsy or Amazon or Poshmark or Mercari or whatever floats your boat. Right? And then you can graduate from side hustle to main thing by figuring out ways and places to acquire more inventory that you can flip for a higher price.

And then the third side hustle I’m confident you’ll make money with is inbound closing (or remote closing or high ticket phone sales or whatever you wanna call it). This is where you find a course creator or a coach and you take sales calls for them; and for each person you enroll into their multi-thousand-dollar program, you get a big fat commission. As long as you’re selling a good program for a good person, this is a legit way to make job-replacing income without all the stress of running your own business.

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Katie Smith: Slip into your give-up pants, crack open a White Claw, and plop yourself down on the couch. We need to talk about the absolute dumpster fire that is the online course and coaching industry.