What are the best side hustles one can begin before the last lap of 2024? If this is your present thought and you’re reading this, then you’re in the right place.
Profitable side hustle can provide you the additional income you need especially when your full-time salary as a 9-5 worker or your monthly allowance as a college student falls short.
Side hustles allow you to explore potential business ideas without having to spend much to start. More so, it offers the opportunity to try from the comfort of your home or venture into one that involves outdoor activities. They are great means to boost your personal finance and it doesn’t matter if you’re stating now.
What is a Side Hustle?
A side hustle is a kind of job you do outside your full-time employment or college degree pursuit to earn additional income. Side hustles are a good way to make money during your free time. Whatever side hustle you decide to go with must be done in consideration of your passion, interests, and willingness to stack or improve already existing skills.
Whether your goal is to make passive income or transform your hobby into a profitable business venture, this list is here to serve as a guide to choosing the best side hustle for yourself.
1. Personal Instructing and Tutoring:
If you have an academic, musical, fine arts or sports skill, this is an incredible option for you because tutors and personal instructors are always in demand. You can sell your instruction services in-person or virtually to parents looking for a convenient session for their kids. Like Christiana Essien, an elementary school teacher, she took the bull by the horn and began her online classes. Currently she teaches kids elementary Mathematics in the most dynamic way.
Do not exclude adult students. If it fits into your side hustle schedule, you can offer sessions during school hours to adults.
The expenses to start this business are minimal. In addition, you can sell your services and manage gigs and payments using apps and online platforms like Preply and Outschool.
Personal instructing and tutoring is a great side hustle for college students.
2. Babysitting and Childcare:
Babysitting and in-house child care is a low-cost side hustle you can use to earn additional income in your free time or on a specific schedule. Certification isn’t necessary in most areas but the American Red Cross offers online and in-person babysitting certification courses that cut across Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR), behavior tactics, and first aid to enhance your credibility.
Care.com and UrbanSitter are platforms available for you to manage gigs and payments. Like wise you can onsider joining groups and creating a page to promote yourself for free.
3. Offer Pet Sitting and Dog Walking:
A pet-sitting side hustle isn’t only easy to set up and publicize, it’s a great choice for pet lovers. Owners consider pets as members of the family. They won’t mind spending dollars on reliable professionals to provide in-home care for pets or keep them during the day or long term while they spend time working or vacationing. You can also increase income by marketing pet insurance to your clients. However, you have to research requirements in your area as some states require permits.
If you love dogs but don’t have the time or space to commit to a doggie daycare setup, dog walking is ideal for you. It also provides the benefits of exercise while earning extra.
An initial setup for pet sitting may require you to purchase kennels or gates. In dog walking, you may want to invest in buying a few leashes or waste bags even though owners provide leashes.
In urban areas, you can find gigs for these side hustles using Wag! and Rover.
4. Become a Freelancer:
Freelancing is a tried and trusted way to earn extra money. It holds many success stories. A freelancer is someone who renders a service to one or more clients at the same time. This is something you can schedule in your spare time. Freelancer graphic designers, writers, editors, voice-over artists, and website developers are in high demand. Other fields like interior decorating, video editors, mechanics, and so on, can find flexible jobs that align with their skill sets and based on their schedule.
You can use freelance platforms like Upwork, Fiverr, and Freelancer.com to manage gigs. More so, you can market your skills via social media and emails.
5. Sell Digital Products:
Digital products are items that only exist online. They include files that can be downloaded or streamed such as technical templates, videos, MP3s, and PDFs. Creating and selling digital products in your spare time is an ideal side hustle, if you have a creative streak.
Use your existing skills sets to create digital artworks, logos, photography, music and website design templates.
You can create digital products using free online platforms such as Canva or PhotoPea. Thereafter, set up an online store when you can sell your products to customers.
6. Senior Sitting and Companion:
Nowadays, more families are catering to aging family members at home. You can hop on this side hustle to provide care for these aged ones while primary caregivers are away. To make you more reliable and trusted, consider taking courses in Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) and activities of daily living (ADL).
Care-based apps such as Sittercity and Papa.com can help you set up your services and manage clients.
7. Set Up a Blog or Newsletter:
This side hustle is best for those who delight in writing and sharing information with people. Pick a niche that interests you, preferably one that’s in demand—travel, finance, technology or mental health. As the number of visitors on your site increases, you can make money through your blog using ads or affiliate sales. Ads pay when visitors click or view, while affiliate sales pay you to promote a product or service. You receive a paid commission when someone clicks on your affiliate link.
There are free sites like Medium or Substack where you can launch a blog or newsletter but you’ll have to purchase a domain if you want to use WordPress hosting services.
8. Become an SEO Specialist:
An SEO Specialist is someone who writes SEO articles for websites and blogs and help them improve their ranking. This lucrative side hustle is highly sought after in the writing industry. If you have knowledge in industries like Saas, personal fitness, pet, mortgage etc, all you need is to learn how to become an SEO Specialist which we’ve covered here and get good at it. Furthermore you need to practice to get perfect and be visible, and inkwrit is the ideal platform where you can achieve this.
9. Personal Assistant:
Many professionals would rather pay one reliable person to juggle various service apps so they can focus on their important tasks in their schedule. If you are someone who loves to tick all boxes on a to-do list, from laundry pickup to grocery shopping to dog walking, and so on, this is an ideal opportunity for you.
Oftentimes, personal assistants can carry out executive assistants-related tasks but on a contract basis.
Moreover, it’s a side hustle with low costs.
10. Sell Handmade Products:
You can cash out from your passion in baking, painting, knitting, or crafting other handmade goods. Put up your ready-made or made-on-order handcrafted goods on sale at local fairs and markets or online stores.
However, this side hustle comes with little upfront costs for supplies and tools, but you can market and make sales online with little or zero upfront costs.
11. Virtual Assistant:
Virtual Assistants offer personal assistant services in the digital world. They handle tasks such as customer emails, appointment scheduling, data entry, and lots more. If you are organized and efficient plus tech-savvy, you can use this side hustle to make money from the comfort of your home.
Apps like TaskRabbit, Upwork, and Indeed will help you find gigs. However, this job requires you to have a reliable laptop and internet connection.
12. Become a Local Handyman:
Do you love setting up basic electrical appliances like fixing a bulb or hanging a ceiling fan? Take advantage of your handyman skills in your free time by helping your neighbour’s get home improvement tasks off their to-do lists.
If you already have tools for the trade, costs will be minimal. However, you can become insured and bonded because it increases your clients’ trust in you.
13 Self-publishing Ebooks & Print-on-Demand (POD) Books:
Even though this side hustle is for writers, you don’t have to be a guru wordsmith to make money from this venture. You can hire ghostwriters to develop a complete manuscript and editors to put the finishing touches to your creative story or content.
In addition, you can hire the services of a graphic designer to create a dazzling book cover. Thereafter, you publish to Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing and other ebook platforms such as Barnes & Noble Press, Lulu, and so on, and wait for the royalties.
More so, you can print your books, from novels to non-fiction books to recipe books, coloring books, notebooks, and more on demand. Upload your book to POD book sales platforms using free or low-cost online tools. The platform where you are selling your book from will print and send a physical copy to a customer who purchases your title, and thereafter, pays you a royalty.
You don’t have to make an upfront payment for printing and shipping because the fees are charged when a book is sold.
14. Mobile Car Washing and Detailing:
If you love outdoor activities, car washing is an ideal job for you especially because many are not eager to wash their cars inside out even though they can do so.
You can either offer this service to individuals at their homes or seek a company that runs fleet vehicles and sign a contract with them. Some of these local businesses may just want to offer weekly car washing services to their employees.
To build your client base, you can offer free services to your family & friends so you can get recommendations.
15. Online Courses and Coaching:
You can make money from your knowledge by creating and putting up for sale online courses and coaching programmes in your free time. It requires a tangible amount of expertise and is easy to launch.
Platforms like Udemy and Podia can help you through the course creation process.
16. Sell Goods Via Dropshipping:
Dropshipping is an online business that enables a third party to produce and ship products on your behalf.
It is a low-risk side hustle because goods are only bought and supplied when a purchase is made.
17. Develop Mobile Apps:
Either a functional app or a fun game, the right app can generate additional income. You need to be proficient in coding to be able to create mobile apps.
Dare yourself by creating an app with basic functionality and post it on app store. You can direct the hours of your weekend to this task since you will be working as a solo developer.
18. Create a Podcast:
Podcasting is a side hustle that costs zero dollars. Setting up and building a podcast is made easy by following a few simple steps. According to the English dictionary, a podcast is an audio programme, over the internet regularly for playback on computers or portable devices such as mobile phones.
You can make money from podcasts through sponsored content, ads, or affiliate links dropped in the podcast descriptions, and paid subscriptions.
After creating your podcasts, you can upload them to your channel on streaming platforms like iTunes, Buzzsprout, Spotify, and many more.
19. Influencer Marketing:
Pick out a niche and start producing content on social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram. Once you have established a loyal following, you can earn money from your account through sponsorships; brands will pay you to advertise their product.
Influencers use most content types to make money—how-to tips, social commentary, product reviews and recommendations, and so on.
20. Sell Print-on-Demand (POD) Products:
This side hustle is similar to dropshipping as the POD vendor handles all the details for you. There are various POD products like T-shirts, mugs, pillows, and much more. Just upload your artwork and include it in various products that are available for print.
21. Build a YouTube Channel:
Set up a YouTube channel and build it by discussing trendy events, offering knowledge, and providing entertainment. You can make money from your YouTube videos once you have reached at least 1,000 subscribers and average over 4,000 video watch hours per year.
This will take a lot of time and patience to achieve but with dedication and diligence, it’s possible to earn thousands of dollars.
22. Become an E-commerce Reseller:
This side hustle requires you to spend much to start, unlike the other ideas in this list. Classic e-commerce requires that you purchase, stock and sell a collection of products from various vendors. In addition, you can increase revenue by integrate your e-commerce business with products from dropshipping, Print-on-Demand (POD) goods and affiliate blogging income. Furthermore, most people build this side hustle into full-time businesses. You can start this side hustle by using e-commerce platforms like Shopify.
23. Deliver packages & deliver groceries and other items:
This gig has a flexible schedule. Most delivery drivers decide on when they prefer to work and only get delivery gigs when they are available.
If you are going to be involved in food delivery services, there are a lot of platforms to choose from.
24. Offer Transcription Services:
As a transcriptionist, you receive files in audio format and convert it into a written format. Simply put, you write what you hear down without altering the original words of the speaker. A listening ear and quick fingers are essential for this job because these files may be videos, phone calls, audio notes and others.
Freelancing platforms like TranscribeMe and GoTranscript can help you get gigs for this job.
25. Take Online Surveys:
Companies and market researchers are constantly seeking to know what people think about their products and services. Depending on the survey outlet, you will have to create an online account and link a PayPal or CashApp account for payment. Thereafter, you research and sign up for surveys that you take an interest in. And then, you finish filling the questionnaire or project and get your payment after a few days. Participating in online surveys won’t help you build a sustainable business but can stuff your pockets with extra cash for the weekend.
26. Resell used or vintage goods:
This is an ideal way to add a few extra cash to your account. All you have to do is join a local buy-and-sell group or Facebook Marketplace and sell items that you are no longer using. If you want to upscale this side hustle idea, look for great thrift items and resell them on a vintage marketplace.
27. Get Paid to Test Apps and Platforms:
Developers are looking for users to test the buttons and click on all links to ensure things are working efficiently before they allow their website or app to go live. You can get paid for helping out with this. Platforms like Userlytics and uTest can help you discover website and app testing gigs.
28. Rent out your home or spare room:
If you are big on home maintenance, you can monetize it by renting out your home or a spare room. This holds a significant earning potential. You can take this side hustle further by selling items to your guests.
29. Offer virtual interior design consultation:
This involves offering advice, layouts, shopping lists, or renovation plans for clients. It is an ideal side hustle idea for you if you are passionate or curious about organization or decor. You could build a portfolio by offering free interior décor services to your family and friends.
Upgrade your business by creating a professional website where you get to onboard clients. This website will also serve as a platform where potential clients can send the challenges with their design and request your services.
30. Sell your photography:
There will always be a need for new photos because websites need to keep their content refreshed. They download these images from sites like Shutterstock and Getty Images which means they are always on the lookout for images. Either as prints or placing them on items like t-shirts, you can sell your photography to these sites.
In addition, you can sell your photography skills as a service by photographing weddings, concerts, graduations, and many others. This can even become your full-time business.
31. Mow lawns and do other landscaping tasks:
Kicking off a lawn care service is made easy by signing up to platforms like TaskRabbit where you can get a lot of landscaping jobs. You can schedule this side hustle into your spare time.
When your client base increases, you can upgrade by investing in quality lawn care equipment to enhance efficiency.
Side Hustles to Avoid
Certain side hustles seem like great money-making schemes but in reality, they require a huge amount of your time, money or both, and result in little profit.
Hustles That Require Licensing or Certification
Some fields such as massage therapy, real estate sales and salon services require that you have an education and licensing or certification. To get this, you will have to spend a lot of money, say $500 to $10,000 or even more. However, this may be a worthwhile investment if you are considering building a career in that field.
Multilevel Marketing (MLM) Schemes
Multilevel Marketing usually called MLM is mostly used by business models that sell inferior items and do not want to invest time and money in making it a better version or marketing their wares. It has to do with individuals becoming vendors for a company and then, they get paid for selling their products and bringing in new vendors.
While MLM is not an illegal business model, it promotes poor marketing practices and provides a lot of advantages for the first few vendors.
Four Tips for Choosing a Side Hustle
With side hustles, you don’t have to depend on your salary all the time to make necessary transactions. Who knows, you could build your side hustle to become a full-time business and quit the 9-5 cycle. Or not have to seek a white-collar job after you bag your college degree. These tips will help you choose the side hustle that is perfect for you.
1. Create a List of your Talents, Interests and Skills:
Take a few minutes to jot down what you love doing and are good at. Think about your hobbies, education and training, creative abilities, fields you are curious about, and what your family and friends come to ask your help for.
2. Check your Schedule:
Ask yourself “How much spare time do I have?” How much time can you dedicate to your side hustle? Think about if you just want a little extra cash or you want to scale into a full-time business and quit your job. Are you ready to invest in building your skills and training?
3. Be sure of your income goal:
Are people making the amount of money you want in that industry? What is the pay range in that industry? How much will you have to work to reach your income goal?
Tips to Achieve Balance in Your 9-5 and Side Hustle
Balancing a full-time job and a side hustle can be tough, but these tips will make finding balance easier.
1. Pace Yourself to Achieve Your Goals:
Set realistic timelines to avoid burnouts. Don’t allow the excitement to make things work quickly for you and make you set unrealistic schedules. Consider using a time tracker tool like Rescue Time when handling projects. This will help you be aware of how much you will need in the future.
2. Outsource Some Tasks:
It’s best to transfer the execution of certain tasks when they clash with your activities in your full-time job. For example, if you’re carrying out edits and formats on a manuscript but don’t know how to design a book cover, outsource that task to a graphic designer rather than spend hours learning how to do so.
3. Focus on your vision:
Discuss with friends or contacts who have small businesses when the going gets rough. Brainstorm ways to restrategize with them. You could also get an entrepreneur as an accountability partner. In addition, create a vision board that will keep your eyes on the prize when you feel like throwing in the towel.
Tips on How to Balance a Side Hustle in College
Below are a few tips to juggle your college commitments along with your side hustle;
1. Goal Setting:
Set realistic goals on how much money you want to earn. Clarity on your financial needs and availability will help you identify side hustles that you can explore. Choose a side hustle that relates to your career interests. For instance, self-publishing ebooks provide experience in Creative Writing, while E-commerce Reselling offers insights into the marketing industry.
2. Manage Your Schedule:
A side hustle isn’t like a traditional job that prevents you from creating your schedule. Allocate specific hours of the week to your side hustle without allowing it to interfere with your academic work and extracurricular activities.
3. Build a Network:
Participate in networking events in your area that are relevant to your side hustle. Join clubs related to your side hustle. For example, joining a Campus News Agency will help you hone your writing craft.
4. Identify and Develop Your Skills:
Make a list of the skills you need for your side hustle. For example, you could improve your technical skills like design or video editing.
Bottom Line
Side hustles is an ideal choice to earn extra income, pursue a passion, or launch a new business. However, no side hustle is a guaranteed success or get-rich-quick scheme.
