Taught by Tina @hellotinamay
Any job or business that you’re doing ‘on the side’ is a side hustle.
For most people the driving force behind wanting to start a side hustle is the extra cash, an extra $500 - $1000 (or more) per month can make a big difference expecially when the cost of living is increasing. But the other reason for having a side hustle is the creative outlet, to have a project that you can work on that’s creative and intellectually challenging.
There are 2 main types of businesses that you can do as a side hustle:
This is things like babysitting, lawnmowing, dog-walking, or join-ing a gig platform like uber or task rabbit or insta-cart.
These side hustles are helpful if you need cash right away because you generally don’t need any specialised skills or experience and you can often start making some cash within a week or two
The downside of these kind of side hustles is that you don’t always have a lot of growth potential - you might earn $15 an hour when you first start doing it and still be earning the same amount 2 years later, and you’re often at the mercy of someone else’s schedule or rules or platform.
This is things like photography, marketing, web development, graphic design, copywriting, etc.
The biggest advantage of skilled side hustles is the growth prospects. You can start by charging $200 for a half day hour photoshoot, and then within 6 months maybe you’re charging $500 and within a year $1000. As your skills, experience and portfolio grows the amount you can earn in a single project or day increases so these kind of side hustles are much more scalable if part of your goal is to have more free time.
The downside of this type of side hustle is that you probably have to invest at least a little time & money in building up your skills & equipment. It doesn’t have to be a huge investment, if you’re spending $2000 learning new skills and then earning $10k over the next 6 months that’s definitely a win overall, but generally for skilled services it takes 2-3 months to learn the skills, launch your business and start really making money from it.
Is it to have a creative outlet? To bring in some extra disposable income? Is it to work with people you’re really passionate about helping, or a specific target audience? Starting a side hustle is something personal, it’s generally going to take some of your time & energy every week so you want to make sure that you’re coming up with a side hustle that fits your goals.
You never know how your current experience could help you in your side hustle, even if it’s not the skill you’re selling. Let’s say for example you’ve spent 10x years distributing coffee beans to cafes & now you want to become a photographer. At first that might seem like a totally different field, but if you consider food & restaurant photography then having an in-depth understanding of the cafe industry as well as dozens of personal contacts who already know, like and trust you is a huge advantage that you can leverage in your new photography side hustle.
How much do you want or have to give to your side hustle, and importantly what does this look like? Is it a few hours here and there as it fits in or set hours every week?
Start small pick one skill you need to master, one service that you can offer, one niche that you can serve.
The more complex your business is, the more work it’s going to be - and when you’re fitting it in around your 9-to-5 you need it to be streamlined.
Try a few different things and see what you like. You can make an incredible side hustle from just about any creative skillset, but one of the best ways to know what might work for you is to try it. Take a free class in web development, photography, marketing & social media, copywriting.
A lot of people focus on just learning the new skill - learning photography or marketing or graphic design and that is definitely a critical first step in launching a side hustle, but you also need to figure out all the business side of things.
Especially when you’re balancing this alongside your 9-to-5 job, you want to make sure you know exactly what to do in the time that you do have to put towards it (and make sure you tune in again in a few days for our workshop on launching your business in 90 days!)
We’d love to hear what you come up with - share it with us under our dedicated post for this workshop on the IOC facebook page or instagram account. And as a little bonus, everyone who shares their thoughts or biggest aha-moment will go in the drawer to win all 4x of our new foundations mini-courses that are launching in 2024 worth $350 each!.
P.S. Want to dive deeper? We hope you’ve found these strategy session lessons helpful as you plan your new year, and if you want to go further this is only a tiny fraction of the knowledge and practical techniques we share in each of our digital bootcamps. We pull back the curtain and share step-by-step exactly how to build a sucessful business as a photographer, web developer or social media manager. Enrollments for our 2024 digital & Bali bootcamps are open now and if you send us a message via live chat with the message ‘2024 strategy sesh bonus’ for an exclusive offer that expires on the 7th Jan.