Entrepreneurship

In an era where financial stability is more elusive than ever, many are turning to side hustles as a way to supplement their income. Whether you’re looking to pay off debt, save for a vacation, or simply add a cushion to your monthly budget, side hustles offer a practical and often rewarding solution. Here are some of the most popular and profitable side hustles you can consider for 2023.

Creative Skills: Unleash Your Inner Artist

If you have a talent for design, photography, or any other creative endeavor, the digital age offers countless opportunities to monetize your skills. Platforms like Etsy and Fiverr serve as excellent marketplaces to showcase your work and connect with clients who are willing to pay for your expertise.

Freelancing: Turn Your Skills into Cash

Freelancing is not just a trend; it’s a viable career option for those who possess marketable skills. Whether you’re into writing, video editing, or web development, freelancing platforms provide a space for you to offer your services and get paid in return. With the right strategy, freelancing can become a significant source of income.

Dropshipping: The Retail Revolution

E-commerce has changed the way we shop, and dropshipping is at the forefront of this revolution. This business model allows you to sell products directly from suppliers to consumers without holding any inventory. With a well-designed website and effective marketing, dropshipping can be a highly lucrative venture.

Flipping Items: Buy Low, Sell High

If you have an eye for value and enjoy the thrill of the hunt, flipping items could be the side hustle for you. Platforms like eBay and Facebook Marketplace are ideal for buying items at a lower cost and selling them for a profit. From vintage furniture to limited-edition sneakers, the opportunities are endless.

Online Courses: Share Your Expertise

If you possess specialized knowledge in a particular field, creating online courses can be both rewarding and profitable. Platforms like Udemy and Coursera make it easy to upload your courses and reach a global audience, providing a passive income stream that can grow over time.

Investing: Make Your Money Work for You

Investing is a long-term game that can pay off handsomely if done correctly. Mutual funds, stocks, and real estate are just a few options to consider. While it may require an initial financial investment, the potential for significant returns makes it a worthwhile endeavor.

Service-Based Businesses: Get Your Hands Dirty

For those who prefer a more hands-on approach, service-based businesses offer a practical way to earn extra income. Whether it’s power washing, lawn care, or home repairs, these types of side hustles often require minimal startup costs and can be easily scaled to fit your schedule.

Conclusion

Choosing the right side hustle is a personal decision that depends on your skills, financial goals, and the amount of time you’re willing to invest. The key is to find an opportunity that not only provides financial benefits but also aligns with your interests and long-term objectives. With the right approach, a side hustle can become more than just a way to make ends meet—it can be a fulfilling and profitable venture.

Most creative people have tons of ideas. Regardless of what you or others may think, most of your ideas could probably be profitable. Lately I’ve been looking at new ideas in a different way. I’ve been sorting them by time – in two ways.

First, time to market. How long is this idea going to take to get users, and eventually sales? I am getting bored of doing software companies that are 6-18 months in development before I start seeing money and that is on the quick side of things in the startup world. I am starting to turn to my ideas that show signs of potential revenue within 30 or 60 days.

Second, is the idea reliant on time? Is there an advantage to launching the idea now vs waiting 6 months? If it can wait 6 months, you should always wait and look at something that needs to be done now. There’s very little benefit in rushing to market if the idea isn’t time sensitive.

When I get a new idea, I like to sit on the idea for a few weeks, sometimes months or even a year. You can only do this if the idea isn’t time sensitive – something evergreen. What happens with most people is they get a new idea and execute based on spur-of-the-moment emotion, then few weeks later, they’re either burned out due to overworking on something they had no interest in, or it wasn’t as good of an idea as they initially thought. Usually bad ideas can still be executed into profitable businesses, but if you truly can’t stay interest after the honeymoon phase has passed, you’ll have a tough time bringing your venture to profit.

Let me tell you about a customer experience from hell.

StockX is a platform for people to buy and sell limited edition sneakers and other apparel. At 4:43 AM, I received a notification that my PayPal was charged for $364.36 USD.

I saw this notification about an hour after it came in and immediately emailed their support email explaining this unauthorized charge. I hopped onto the StockX website to find that the email address on file for my account was changed. I immediately clicked to unlink my PayPal from StockX before another charge would occur.

I discovered that someone purchased a Supreme x North Face backpack and had planned to ship it to Paris, France.

After no response for an hour, I decided to log into PayPal to place a hold on the charge, before the money was gone for good. What happens next? They ban me for denying the charge.

Josh,

We will be suspending your account indefinitely due to a chargeback via PayPal. We cannot risk another future chargeback from your account. We do not allow any returns, or exchanges on StockX.

Thanks,
Russ

Finally, a support agent reaches out to my original email, saying they cannot find the fraudulent item that was purchased. I go to login to StockX so I can send over a screenshot about the fraudulent email and the page loads blank, because my account is disabled.

So how exactly did this happen?

• StockX allows you to easily change the email address on file without confirming the change from the old email. This means receipt emails for fraudulent will avoid your inbox.
• The PayPal link they have in place must not require a password to re-login via PayPal before purchasing

Figure it out, Russ.

People wonder why I didn’t self-publisher rather than going with Morgan James. Some articles discuss the idea that Morgan James authors are conned into using Morgan James but that’s not necessarily true. While I’ve ran into several issues with Morgan James and my experience has been far from perfect (more on that here), I chose Morgan James for a few reasons. I’m going to go over the benefits and drawbacks of going with Morgan James rather than CreateSpace, as I did consider this carefully. This is informal review of my experience so far.

The main benefits over CreateSpace:

• The team is helpful with pushing everything along and educating you on the process. They have the patience to work with first time authors, like myself.
• They have the ability to place you on the shelves in book stores. I can’t speak for if I get placed, but I’ll keep you updated.
• They understand internal formatting – something I had no experience with.
• There’s nothing worse than telling someone you wrote a book, then telling them you don’t have a publisher.
• They have been used by top marketers like Joel Comm, E. Brian Rose and Russell Brunson, for a reason.
• They have connections with reputable fulfillment centres that can be sure to integrate with your sales funnel.

The main drawbacks:

• New authors must pre-purchase books. After you’re published once, you don’t have to do this again.
• Updating your manuscript costs money.

People also ask me why I went with Morgan James instead of going with a literary agent who could hunt up a big publishing house like Penguin or any of its imprints.

The main benefits:

• I can sell copies through my own channels at a different price than the stores.
• When selling through my own channels, I keep a larger percentage of the sales revenue.
• They can get you to market faster than traditional publishers. My niche is based on technology which is time sensitive.

The main drawbacks:

• Placement in bookstores is not guaranteed.

I think Morgan James has its place in the publishing space. It may not be right for everyone, but it was right for me. So far the first 6 months has been a good experience and I hope I can say the same 6 months from now. Talk soon.

I named this post imaginary value based off the idea of imaginary numbers. Just because the additional earnings and value accumulated that we are about to talk about are not real or tangible at this point, it doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

Ok Josh, you’re off your rocker. What are you talking about?!

When you start a software venture and it makes say $2,000 per month net profit for example. Cash in hand, you pocket $2,000 every month, before taxes. However, if you’re new to starting companies, like I was a few years ago, you don’t see the additional value. Right now, you might be thinking, “Wow, I’m only making $2,000 after all this work! That’s only $24k a year. It’s not nearly enough to justify all this work.”

One of the first things most beginners miss is the increase in company value. Let’s assume your company is worth 12 times monthly net profit. So now after 1 year, you have a $24,000 company. So if you sell out, you actually made approx. $48,000.

Then, you have things like the brand name. You won’t always own the brand but it will always be attached to your résumé. If the company takes off after you sell it, that résumé item really holds a lot of value. By résumé, I don’t just mean applying for jobs, but it will allow you to get media coverage, and if it was big enough, maybe even a book deal!

If you replicated the process of building a similar company a couple more times, you could even write a book or create a course on it. You’ll have 3 brand names (that you may or may not own anymore) that you can mention in your sale pitch.

Then you have what you learned. Experience is one of the best forms of education. You can take what you just learned, and apply it on a bigger idea next time. After each success, your chance of success increases. You know the process. You’re much less naive. It’s like my good friend Don tells me, your first million is always the hardest.

Another form of imaginary value is the connections you make. Your business likely made new connections with suppliers, freelancers, investors and many forms of people who can add value to your business. I personally owe a large portion of my success to mentors — not paid mentors but more experience people who lend advice once a month. With these people now added to my life, every aspect of my future projects will be better off with their opinion.

Photo by Amazon.com

Rocket Fuel is a book wrote by Gino Wickman and Mark C. Winters, and was recommended to me by my friend, Thomas Smale. While the book seems to target medium sized business owners and larger, I was able to apply what was taught in it to my own business doings.

As some of you know, I generally build niche software that sell in the 5 to 6 ARR range. What I learned in this book helped me solidify why some of my past businesses have thrived and others have failed.

The book explains how visionaries are generally the creative type. They are generally the founder of the company and they have their pros and their cons. Integrators are the guys that make it happen. They work directly with the leadership team in a medium sized business or larger. They have different tasks and are each an important asset to the company. The book also says that visionaries are 4x more common than integrators. I recommend you pick up this book to learn more, but first, let me explain how I interpreted the book and used it in my life.

As I said earlier, I build niche software. I’m a programmer, but I’m also a sales man. I can do both, quite well, but this book helped me realize that it’s almost impossible to wear both hats in the same company.

My take on the book is, although I am capable of doing either job, it works best if I choose 1 role, and hire the other role out. I call this hired role, my integrator. Although this book teaches in a way that your integrator has to always have someone under it, in my lean products, there isn’t. This recently has worked fantastic for me with my latest software, SerpClix. I hired a programmer, and instead of writing the code, which I could, I decided to work purely on vision and sales, and paid a programmer to do it. Occasionally, I even take on freelance programming gigs, where I’m paid 3x that of what I pay my programmer that works under me.

This is working quite well. I’m fully focused on marketing the software, using the customer feedback for vision and I simply report bugs and features to the programmer, almost like someone who doesn’t know how to code would. I’m able to make educated technical decisions on directions for the software, when needed, but I generally don’t get too involved in development.

This strategy has given me more time, made it easier to bring my product goals to life, gave me more pressure to never put this project on the “back burner” aka give up and allows me to focus on bringing in the sales. Being as young as I am, it’s hard to stay concentrated as there’s always another “shiny object” that looks more fun to execute however the method outlined in this book has opened my eyes to my strengths and weaknesses as a visionary and make me realize that I need an integrator on my projects.

I’m asked on regular basis, what is an easy way for a college student to make money. Well, the easiest way to make money is by offering something that is in very high demand and offer it at a fair price. You’ll make lots of money. In college, there are lots of students who, instead of focussing on the clep study guide, are desperate to make money in their spare time. Most students don’t have the luxury of a schedule that permits a part time job with scheduled hours.

The easiest way for a college student to make money is by freelancing. However, you’re probably wondering what kind of skills you can find on campus. Pretty much all students, regardless of their major, are essay writers and a fair chunk of them are good at it. Skilled English writers are hard to find in an economy where we outsource everything to offshore workers. They don’t have the English ability that we do.

A good student can likely pump out 1000 words in an hour. Article writers are paid anywhere from $2 to 6 per 100 words. Even if you only pay the student half the profit, you can easily scale this business across many writers and build something worthwhile. If you can sell a modest 5000 words per day at $4 per 100 words, that’s $200 per day in revenue.

Another talent you can find is programming. Second year computer science students are worth a lot of money in the workforce. They are at the turning point in their career where they are reaching the skill level to be employable. A couple loyal programmers can be the basis of an excellent in house programming service.

Now, you’re probably wondering where you should find these students. The easiest way is to post in your school’s Facebook group. Most schools have a group for jobs and internships. Message them and find out who feels reliable and has the best communication with you.

So lets say you’ve found the students. Where are you going to promote your services? The best place is online forums. There are tons of marketing forums out there that are always looking for services. Warrior Forum would be one of many options to list a thread. If you need help finding more places to offer your services, just shoot me a Tweet or email.

By offering writing or programming services online, you can fill a very large gap in the demand these services have.

There’s no way to go about it, coding is an in demand skill and is at the heart of the tech industry which  has thousands of unfilled jobs every year. Many people are afraid to learn or just don’t have the discipline. Companies like Code.org have started initiatives like Hour of Code which organize events teaching students from all walks of life how to code. Hour of Code shows every student, boy or girl, that they can learn to code too. I’m now in a 3rd year Computer Science program and love what I do. Here’s how I did it.

I started messing around with code around grade 9, the beginning of high school. I didn’t actually know what I was doing until I took a class in grade 10 on it. I got 95% and another pair of 95s when I took the grade 11 and 12 version. Before then, I thought the key was reading books. I have several 500+ paged textbooks on Java, C++, C# and many other languages. The key to learning to write code is practice. You have to apply what you’ve read or learned or you’ll forget.

On another note, I spent way too much time worrying about which language to learn. Oddly enough, know I know several programming languages. The semantics between the languages are similar… there are if/else statements, variables, loops and objects. The only thing that really changes is the syntax… the brackets, the semicolons, the parenthesis, etc.

When I taught my sister and girlfriend to code, both of them had no idea or confidence that they could do it. I assured them that they can do it. I told them to register on Codecademy.com and start doing the lessons. Choose Python as your beginning language, and read the couple sentences and do the quiz. Each lesson requires you to apply your knowledge, which is why this method works.

Once you’re done the course, move on to creating your own projects. Try to apply what you’ve learned, use the Python documentation and third party libraries to get what you want done. You may have expected a big secret, but there is none. The only thing I could possibly call a secret is the fact that you need to practice what you’ve learned so that you actually remember what you’ve learned.

So many freelancers sit on Upwork all day bidding on jobs. I started freelancing about 6 months ago, and I already have more work than I can handle, turning much of it down. I have no problem getting endless hourly jobs in the $25-50 USD per hour range. Being 20 years old, that’s not so bad.

The first step is to work with someone who has connections. Build out a simple project for them, and do it for dirt cheap. 20 hour job for $200. The key is, they’ve got to be a somebody. They have to have clients and the ability to refer you to others when they are given the chance. You likely know someone already who has this ability. Just help them out and they’ll treat you well.

I did this, and I was referred to a Wall Street Journal featured company who raised a $25,000,000 funding round earlier this year. The referrals just keep growing and the hourly rate keeps going up.

Also, do the first projects through Upwork (formerly Elance and oDesk). This will get your profile from 0 ratings to 1 or 2 ratings with 5 stars. This will be enough to generate jobs with a good cover letter. Explain why you’re better than the rest and you’ll win that job. You won’t ever rely off Upwork completely. It will help you get a few jobs, grow your portfolio, get experience and build a name. I imagine the amount of people that make $100k+ per year through the Upwork system is low because they eventually move off the system and work with the same repeat customers over and over.

By doing jobs for cheap initially, and getting some easy reviews on freelancing sites like Upwork, you’ll have no problem getting coding work.