Your wealth is not tied directly to your salary. If you want to become richer, then getting a raise or a promotion is only one of many different options available to you. Not only is there the option to create new revenue streams, but there’s also the opportunity to reduce overheads. If you have more coming in and less going out… then you’ll increase your wealth. That’s where the best side hustles come in.
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Side hustles are small business models that you can run on the side of your primary source of income. Ideally, these will require minimum input from you, while generating a steady stream of revenue. Set up enough of these, and you can supplement your income many times over to amass impressive personal wealth and far greater resilience.
In this post, we’ll explore easy, profitable, and highly effective side hustles that you can start earning money from today.
Table of Contents
1 Selling Kindle books
Selling Kindle books is extremely easy and straightforward, which makes it one of the best side hustles for the widest range of people. To create a Kindle book, you only need a PDF or word file, which you will then upload to Amazon’s servers via Kindle Direct Publishing. There is no signup fee, the process takes less than 5 minutes, and you’ll be able to start selling your book within 48 hours!
This isn’t going to be a huge money generator for most people. You’ll make up to 70% royalty for each sale, but this is an extremely competitive market. The best strategy is to try and find a niche that you can target, and then understand how to optimize your listing for Amazon’s search function. Most books will bring in a trickle of revenue, but if you keep at it, you might just land on a big hit eventually (it’s Pareto’s Law!). That can be game-changing.
2 Selling stock photography
Sites like Envato Elements and Shutterstock exist to allow webmasters, bloggers, and businesses to use high-quality images, videos, and graphics in their designs. This media is provided by a large user base of talented professionals, each of whom receives some kind of financial reward whenever one of their creations gets used.
Again, this isn’t likely to be big bucks right away. But if you have a high-quality camera and a knack for photography, then you probably already have hundreds of pictures lying around on the hard drive that could earn you some money. Upload them, sell the rights, and you can start generating more income. The same goes for any music compositions you may have made or graphics you might have used for personal projects. Of course, if this proves lucrative then you can always make some bespoke content!
To be successful, try to consider the kinds of images and graphics that will be in demand. What article would that current
3 Creating a course
When I was at a YouTube event a few years back, I met a guy who told me he earned a full time living from selling courses on self-confidence and self-improvement. This was a fully passive business model, meaning that he could do whatever he wanted with his days.
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There are countless sites that you can sell online courses through, including Udacity and Skillshare. You’ll likely need to be comfortable speaking to a camera (or at least using screen-capture software), and of course, you’ll need marketable skill or knowledge. But if you satisfy those criteria, this is one of the best side hustles that will continue to bring in a profit for years.
4 Run a blog or vlog
I’d like to point out that this is not a side hustle that you can easily start in a few days and begin earning revenue! The amount of money a blog or YouTube channel earns per visitor is minute, meaning it may take years before you see decent returns.
But if this is just a side hustle rather than a primary source of income, then that’s fine. It’s especially fine if you also genuinely enjoy the subject matter and would happily make the content for free. And once your blog or vlog does gain momentum, it can present a huge number of new opportunities.
5 Become an influencer
Likewise, building a big social media following can take a lot of time. But posting to Twitter or Instagram every day doesn’t take long. And as long as you have something interesting to say, this can be enough to grow your audience over time.
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Once you have an Instagram account with 10,000+ followers, you can begin making sponsored posts to potentially generate thousands of dollars for two minutes of work!
6 Sell services
Whether you’re a writer, a web designer, a programmer, or a personal trainer, selling these services are some of the best side hustles you can run online. This is a straightforward business model that is easy for anyone to understand, and thanks to sites like UpWork and Fiverr, it is a straightforward process to find clients too. And because you can decide precisely how much or how little work you want to take on, this is one of the best side hustles for adapting to your current lifestyle.
7 Service arbitrage
Or, if you want to be clever, you could try something called service arbitrage. Here you will still provide clients with a service, the only difference is that it’s not you providing the service! Rather, you are going to pass the order on to someone willing to work for a lower wage and in a “white label” capacity (meaning that they don’t require credit).
In other words, someone hires you to write a 2,000-word blog post for $30, you then hire someone to do the same job for $20, and then pocket the remaining $10! It sounds too good to be true, but there’s nothing immoral about it so long as everyone is aware of what’s going on. Market yourself as a writing agency and you’re good to go!
8 Become a reseller
A more traditional way to resell someone else’s work at a profit is by buying and selling products. You do this by going to a wholesaler or manufacturer and buying the product in bulk. From there, you can then market the product and sell it on for a slightly higher price via a storefront or even on eBay. Invest some of those profits into buying a bigger inventory next time, and gradually scale your business!
9 Sell an art or craft
Or why not make the product yourself? If you’re good at painting, making jewelry, or woodwork, then this is a skill you can sell through eBay, Etsy, or even your store.
The best products are those that are simple and easy to make, but that have a clear USP and a lot of imagination. I once saw a small business selling jewelry made out of Lego pieces: simple, easy, and with an immediate appeal!
10 Build an app
Finally, if you have the necessary skills, it is still possible to make money by selling a mobile app. As long as you have a good idea and some basic coding skills, this can then sit in the Google Play Store or Apple App Store and generate a steady profit for you from each sale or each viewer that clicks on an ad.
Like many other options on this list, selling an app is perfect for generating passive income, meaning that once the app is live, you don’t need to do anything else to see the money come in steadily. My advice for this one is to pick a project that is relatively simple for your first app and to aim to have something released early so you can test the market for it. Don’t sink years into an elaborate social app that will take you years to develop with no guarantee that it’s going to be successful.
Closing thoughts
These are just some of the best side hustles you can start using today. In reality, there are near-limitless options for generating side income online. And the best part? There’s nothing to say that you can’t use multiple strategies from this list all at once! This way, you can create multiple revenue streams to supplement your primary income and to ensure you can weather any storm.