With the Oscars looming just around the corner, movie fans around the globe are getting excited.
Will their favourite movies of the year win? Will La La Land win big? Will Leo finally get his Oscar? Oh wait, scrap that, he finally got one last year.
With the Oscars in mind, I want to present a different typeof awards:
The Oscars of Money: The Best Side Hustles
While I can’t quite compete with Jimmy Kimmel’s sense of humour and charming smile, I can definitely bring some he cannot; proven money-making ideas to start a side hustle!
As I’ve talked about before, starting a side hustle in your free time is a great way to supplement your income. You can easily make an extra $200 per month without spending that much time.
What would an extra $200 mean for you?
You could advance your student loan payments, pay off your mortgage quicker or simply reach early retirement quicker.
So, pick up a glass of champagne, take yourseat, and enjoy the “award ceremony”. Hopefully, you’ll even start a new side hustle by the end of this article!
We’re all different, which is why there are 5 different award categories. Someone with a high-stress corporate job might not be suited to a side hustle more apt for a stay at home parent.
Pick the category that better reflects your situation and try out the side hustle that I suggest for it!
Best for people with little time
Before you raise your hand and shout “Me! I have little time!”, let me clarify what I mean. This is for people that can only spare around 3 hours a week or less.
This side hustle needs to be quick to learn, set up, and maintain. It must also be pretty passive to run once set upso that the 3 hours a week can be maintained.
Winner: Kindle Publishing
Publishing ebooks on Kindle is a side hustle that I’ve really profited from. It consists of publishing short non-fiction e-books on Amazon Kindle that solve a particular problem.
I’ve written previously about my experience with Kindle publishing and how great it was for me before I left my job. I’ve only got 7 e-books published, and I routinely make around $100 per month completely passively – I’ve literally not touched them for months.
I really recommendthat you take the K Money Mastery course, as it covers everything you need to get started. Most of the course are video lessons, so you can even listen to them while you do other things!
Best for stay at home parents
From what I know – feel free to correct me if I’m wrong! – people who stay at home and care for their children while their other half goes to work a 9-5 job have one advantage; flexibility.
Winner: Freelance Writing
This is one of the best side hustles for stay at home parents because it has the potential to be very lucrativewhile also providing great flexibility. As long as you can carve out the time to look for clients and to write great articles, you could be earning a substantial amount of money.
The best part about freelance writing is that it gives you a lot of control – you choose your clients, projects and how much workload you’re ready to take on.
The Write Life has some great resources for people looking to make money by freelance writing. Make sure to check it out!
I’ve actually started a side-gig offering writing and marketing services for small and medium-sized businesses. If you’d like to hire me, please let me know! 😉
Best for people with lots of time butlittle money
Most people in today’s society will find themselves trapped in a routine that leaves them with very little free time – but they make good money. A smaller amount of people, however, are in the opposite position; they have a lot of free time but don’t make that much money!
If you’re in this position, your priority is to make more money, pronto!
While other side hustles are great at building up your passive income streams, someone in this category will need to focus on active income.
Winner: Tie! Dog Walking and House Sitting
As someone with plenty of time, you need to capitalise on the fact that a lot of people don’t have time.
People with dogs will often pay for dog walkers who can take their furry friends on a stroll once a day – rather than leave them trapped in a flat for 10 hours straight… 🙁
Other people will pay you to stay in their home while they’re away. One of my best friends often does this, and gets to live in pretty fancy houses for a weekend while getting paid for it!
Best for people with money to invest
If you have a lump sum of money, you’re going to need to make it grow. Leaving it in the bank isn’t an option anymore – unless you enjoy making less money than how much things go up in price!
Winner: Amazon FBA
If you’ve always dreamed about starting your own online store, with your own products and all, Amazon FBA could be for you.
This basically consists of creating your own products and letting Amazon leverage their huge selling power. Once you’ve had your products manufactured and delivered to the Amazon warehouses, they’ll take care of everything for you – for acut of your profits, of course.
There are people who have had some amazing success doing this, like Spencer Haws fro Niche Pursuits. Reading his articles on Amazon FBA is tempting me into starting another side hustle (like Escaping to Freedom and my marketing side-business weren’t enough!)
Another option if you have a pretty large lump sum of money and you’re not looking to multiply your money quickly, investing in dividend paying stocks is an incredible option. I wrote an article that shows you how to live off dividends – and even end up reaching financial independence.
Best for budding entrepreneurs
If you’re like me, you have big ambitions. A side hustle is only the first stop on a train to complete success.
For people like us, a side hustle must have a high ceiling for expansion. Heck, it should have no ceiling at all!
What side hustle is great for newbies and has the potential to become a real and very profitable business?
Winner: Blogging
I think that EVERYONE should start a blog.
A blog sets up your presence in the ever-expanding interwebs, and it’s pretty simple and cheap to start up!
I knew that a lot of my readers would want to start their own blog, so I made what I consider to be the best blog set-up guide out there – although I might be a little biased 😛
Click here to check out my guide on how to start your own blog – in 30 minutes.
I’m sure you’ve heard of many examples of regular people who started a blog for fun. After a while, their blogs became profitable and they ended up taking the leap and quitting their 9-5 jobs to become full-time entrepreneurs and their own bosses.
It happens so often because it’s quite a logical progression: when you do something you’re really passionate about, you’re going to give it the best you’ve got. Your skills and creativity will be focused on this one thing, so it’s difficult for it not to end up working out!
This is the very thing that I’m doing here with Escaping to Freedom. I love writing about entrepreneurship and personal finance, and I hope it shows! And to think that this all started with me buying one year of web hosting with Hostgator.
Best decision I’ve made – so far. 😉
Question for you: Have you tried any of the side hustles above? If so, what’s your experience?
Lastly, if you could share this article on social media you’d be doing me a great favour 🙂
PS. Enjoy the Oscars!
