We’re all about hustle culture and putting the time and effort into achieving our dreams. Whatever your motivation, whether it be financially-oriented, creative-focused, or autonomy-centric, part of our mission is to provide content that serves as an asset to help launch your new venture. A business can organically scale from freelancing or side hustling. If you are unfamiliar with the term side hustle, it’s a job or role that generates income beyond one’s regular occupation or main source of income. Side hustling isn’t a new phenomenon. In fact, the expression has been around since the 1950s. However, the term was re-popularized during the Great Recession when traditional jobs disappeared and people needed to find alternative sources to make ends meet. And, as cost of living continues to reach new heights, side hustling doesn’t appear to be falling off. With more side hustlers comes more competition. So, if your goal is to add additional income, this will be your guide to actually making money with your side hustle.
After asking people how inflation and stagnant salaries impacted them, we recognized that there was a good number of responders that were either side hustling or considering it during the year. If you felt alone, here are statistics that can provide some comfort. Close to 50% of Millennials that side hustle claim that it comprises almost half of their income. Generation X’s motivations were different than Millennials in that they want to live the American Dream and feel that a side hustle is one of the ways to reach that goal. Baby Boomers, on the other hand, are least likely to hold a side hustle. Oftentimes, they use side hustles as a way to supplement their retirement income or alleviate the stress and anxiety of having less responsibilities than their prime working years.
We were hearing this question a lot offline, “Okay, I need something else than what my job is paying. Where and what can I do to make a little extra income?” Even when we conducted an online search there were few results that offer a good response to the question. There are pages and pages that list which side hustles you can start, but none of them detail what it takes to go from nothing to something. That’s where the work starts. First, decide which side hustle you’re going to start. If you haven’t done so yet, review one the following posts:
- How You Can Come Up With Great Business Ideas
- Launch a New Venture With One of These Seven Low-Cost Business Ideas (Part 1)
- Launch a New Venture With One of These Seven Low-Cost Business Ideas (Part 2)
- Launch a New Venture With One of These Seven Low-Cost Business Ideas (Part 3)
Now that you have a side hustle idea that you are comfortable with starting, look into where your customers congregate. For instance, if you decided to become a freelance writer there are a couple of channels, such as Fiverr or Upwork, that can be useful to you. Why do you want to know where your customers congregate? Efficiency. You could spin your wheels trying to market your services, sell your offering, embed a payment processing system, systemize the business, create a website, and still not make a sale. Which is why it’s important for you to find out where your ideal customers currently purchases what you are offering. If your side hustle can be done online/remotely, you want to use the traffic from a freelancing site to your advantage. They already have traffic, all you need to do is attract the attention of the audience.
One of the next things that you want to do is familiarize yourself with whichever platform you chose. Each of them have advantages and disadvantages, but that discussion will be reserved for another post. It’s not just a matter of understanding how the website works, but getting a good grasp of how customers engage with the interface, how sellers market themselves online and offline, and how the relationship between the customer and seller usually develops. Spend time looking around the site for services similar to the ones that you offer. What verbiage is on their profiles? What works and what doesn’t work. What are top sellers writing in contrast to the lowest sellers.
Once you’ve taken the time to explore the platform, learn how to create a gig. Remember a great gig can go a long way. Make your description clear and concise. Step away for a few hours. When you return, ask yourself, “Would I buy my offering?” If your answer is “no”, rework your description.
Surely, after reviewing and revising, your gig description looks enticing. To go one step further, include a guarantee or promise to your potential customers. This can be in the form of free revisions, additional services, special offers, or faster delivery. You can get creative, but make sure that you fulfill your promise. By having a guarantee, customers will feel more secure with buying from you.
At this point, you’ve done a lot of the prep work. It’s time to get noticed. On many of the freelancing sites, your rating is your honor. That can be annoying, especially when you’re new, but don’t let it discourage you. Because this is part of where the difference is made. When the frustration sets in, new sellers can make one of two decisions: (1) wait it out, or (2) give up. You don’t want to do either. Your goal is to make money from your side hustle. In order to do so, you can find people looking for your service on the platforms through their communities or platforms, ask higher tier sellers to subcontract work to you, or bring customers from other channels (social media, as an example) to the freelancing site. Most sites make it easy to share or post your offer. Take advantage of this feature. It’s going to take some initiative to drum up the first few customers. Once you do, it’ll be important to build great relationships so that they become repeat buyers. Otherwise, you’ll end up spinning your wheels trying to bring in new business. It’ll be too time consuming. Also, it doesn’t hurt to reach out to clients that have purchased from you in the past. If you developed a good relationship and rapport, let them know that you have some space open in your queue. Don’t pester them, just send a friendly reminder every so often.
Lastly, stay on top of things and be patient. Respond quickly to potential customers and community questions. Honor your guarantees. Fulfill service requests. And, remember success doesn’t happen overnight. You will face a lot of rejection, but eventually it’ll click.