Side hustle ideas

A side-hustle is an additional source of income that is separate from your "day job" that you control. This can be anything from a few dollars a day to an amount that pays more than you make from your employer. The beauty of having a side hustle is that you can start to decouple how much time you spend and how much income you earn for that time. This is called passive income. For example, you make $10/hour at your main job but you've built up your side hustle to bring in $50/day whether you do anything or not. This is the key to start leveling up your financial well-being and seeing major results. Once you build up one, you can build a second, a third, and so on. We highly recommend checking out The 4-hour workweek by Timothy Ferriss for more on the idea of passive income.

Everyone has a different motivation for starting a side hustle. The most common is to generate additional income on top of your day job but there are many other reasons to embark on this journey. While additional income is always a plus, side hustles have a few unique traits that are not a part of a traditional job. Surprisingly, working for yourself can bring more stability to your finances. If you happen to lose your main job, the side hustle can help provide a temporary replacement income so you do not have to dig as far into your savings.

Along with added stability comes freedom. You are free to run your business as you see fit. This can be a great creative outlet that you might otherwise miss out on. This creativity can be expressed in an almost endless amount of ways and is only limited by your imagination and way to monetize. A new form of freedom can emerge once you can make your side hustle(s) your main source of income. If you build this to be a passive source of income, you have the potential to travel, volunteer in your community, or grow other companies. You will also have to learn new skills to run the business, manage other people, and growing your customer base. These new skills will make you a better more well-rounded employee or student. Raises and new opportunities might arise from this side hustle in other areas of your life.

The most important aspect of owning a business or side hustle is providing more value to your customers than what they are paying for. Seeing happy customers that you have helped can be extremely motivating and rewarding. Many of our daily jobs might be missing this feeling of purpose that can be found from building something on your own or with a team that you grow.

Now that you have the idea of what a side hustle is, take a look around you. See if you can come up with any ideas that you can start quickly and easily with these concepts in mind. If you ever find yourself thinking "I wish this product/service" existed there are probably other people that would find value if you made that product/service a reality!

You will also need to come up with a strategy to monetize your idea. Physical products and services are pretty obvious on how to monetize but online ideas might be a little more tricky. Providing affiliate links or advertising on your website is a great way to add income to your side hustle, after all, that is the main monetization strategy we use for ClinkUp! This is also a common strategy for YouTube channels and other social media influencers. Adding customized merchandise is a great way to monetize and advertise your brand. This can be clothing with funny graphics relevant to your brand, products specific to your brand (ex: kitchen utensils for a cooking Instagram page), or even subscription boxes.

Have a skill that others might not? That is a perfect side hustle idea! Take your passion for photography and take professional dating app pictures for your friends. Sell your eye for design on Fiverr. Sell your baked treats for birthday parties and weddings. Almost everything that you are passionate about has the potential to be a side hustle. Scan through some ideas we have come up with below for inspiration.