With the rise of the creator economy and remote work, there are numerous side hustles you can start today to make some extra money. According to Bankrate, nearly 45% of all Americans have a side hustle. This makes up nearly 70 million people living in the U.S. that have some type of side hustle. Although side hustles are beneficial in general, some have much better business models. In this post, we’ll cover the 9 best side hustles you can start today.
1. Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is a side hustle where you can earn commission by promoting other people’s products. You can find affiliate programs for nearly any product or service online. To get started, you just need to sign up for an affiliate program and start promoting products. Once you make a sale, you’ll earn a commission.
There are different ways you can promote products with affiliate marketing. The two most popular methods are blogs and YouTube channels. With these mediums, you can create evergreen content and make passive affiliate sales over time. To be successful with affiliate marketing, you need to be consistent with your content and build up an audience. If you can do this, you’ll be able to make a lot of money with this side hustle.
2. Amazon FBA
Amazon has nearly 10 million sellers worldwide and nearly 2 million sellers alone in the U.S. Selling on Amazon is the most common side hustle in the world. Nearly 1% of the American population is a registered Amazon seller. There are many different business models within Amazon FBA; they include private label, retail arbitrage, online arbitrage and wholesaling.
To get started with Amazon FBA, you need to fill out the seller application and you can start doing product research to figure out what type of product you want to sell. Once you’ve found your specific product, you can source it and send your products to Amazon’s warehouses, which act as your virtual business address. Once your products are in Amazon’s warehouses, Amazon will take care of the fulfillment and customer service and you can get paid whenever your product sells.
3. Blogging
One of the best side hustles you can start today is blogging. When you start a blog, you can share your knowledge and expertise with the world and monetize your content. Blogging is powerful because there are so many ways you can monetize your content. Some of the common ways blogs are monetized include display advertising, affiliate marketing, sponsorships and consulting.
To be successful with a blog, you need to be consistent with your content and build up an audience. Once you have a large enough audience, you can start monetizing your blog and scaling your operations.
4. E-commerce
Starting an e-commerce store is one of the best long-term side hustles and it can easily turn into a full-time business. There are endless ways to start in e-commerce; the most popular methods to get started with e-commerce are to sell with Shopify or to sell on marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, etc.
To be successful with e-commerce, you need to find a profitable niche and provide value to your customers. You also need to create high-quality products that solve a problem for your customer. If you can do this, you’ll be able to build a successful e-commerce store.
With e-commerce, it’s best to focus on one marketing channel to get in front of your customers. This can be using shopify marketing, paid ads, SEO, influencer marketing, email marketing, etc. Once you’ve figured out which marketing channel works best for your business, you can scale your e-commerce store and start making significant revenue.
5. Become a virtual assistant
A virtual assistant is a side hustle where you offer your administrative services to people online. As a virtual assistant, you can do a variety of things such as social media management, customer service, email marketing, data entry, etc. The more skilled you are, the higher you can charge for your services.
To get started with becoming a virtual assistant, you need to find clients. The best way to find clients is to reach out to your network and see if anyone needs help with their administrative tasks. You can also join online communities or forums where people are looking for virtual assistants. Once you’ve found your first client, you can start charging them for your services.
6. Gig economy jobs
The gig economy is a fast way to get started with making side income. There are many different gig economy jobs you can do such as being a driver for Uber or Lyft, delivery driver for Postmates or DoorDash, doing odd jobs on TaskRabbit, etc. Most of these jobs can be done at your own pace, so there’s little to no conflict with your current work/school schedule.
To get started with the gig economy, you need to sign up for the platform you want to work on and start completing gigs. The gig economy is great because there are many different types of jobs you can do and many don’t require previous experience, so you can find one that’s a good fit for you.
7. Freelancing
Freelancing is one of the quickest ways to get started with a side hustle. As a freelancer, you can take a specific skill you have and start selling it to businesses on a contract basis. This can include writing, graphic design, photography, video editing and more. The best part about freelancing is that you can work with clients all over the world. You also have the flexibility to work from home or onsite with your clients.
To get started with freelancing, you need to create a portfolio of your work and start reaching out to businesses that could use your services. You can also use freelancing platforms like Upwork, Fiverr or Freelancer to find clients. Once you have a few clients, you can start charging more for your services and scaling your business.
A great example of someone who has had great success with freelancing is Charles Floate. Charles Floate started off as a freelance SEO consultant and grew his SEO agency to $250k per month over the course of several years by doing SEO for large businesses. When your freelance business starts growing, you can hire a team to fulfill services and you can focus on sales and marketing.
8. Social media management
One of the best gigs for social media savvy people is to do social media management for businesses. Businesses spend a lot of money on building their brand on social platforms, but many require the help of a platform expert to grow an audience. With social media management, you can help these businesses grow their audience and reach their target market.
To be successful with social media management, you need to have a deep understanding of the different social media platforms. You also need to be able to create high-quality content for each platform and manage the overall social media strategy for your clients. It’s best to pick one platform and market yourself as an expert in that and sell your services to clients.
9. Email marketing
Email marketing is one of the most profitable marketing channels and businesses are willing to pay top dollar for people who do it well. If you’re good at email marketing, you can easily make a side income by providing this service to businesses at a monthly rate. With just a couple of clients, you can start making a full-time income and do it as your main job.
Email marketing entails managing a business’s email list, sending out newsletters, and creating targeted email campaigns. To be successful with email marketing, you need to understand what type of content your audience wants and how to create email campaigns that get results.
These are just some of the ways you can get started with a side hustle. To learn more about how you can get started with affiliate marketing, check out this blog here.
Writer Bio –
Ali Ali is a content marketer and blogger at alisquared.co.
When he’s not guest posting, you can find him link building and learning about technical aspects of SEO. He can be reached at [email protected].
