I’ve tried 12 Different Side hustles in the last 17 years.
I’m not proud of this, by any means, but I wanted to share my experience with the ones I’ve tried in hopes that my experiences can help any of you.
Some of these made me a lot of money and turned into a full-time business, while others were a complete waste of my time and I wish I had never even spent the money, energy or resources pursuing them.
I want to elaborate by saying that just because one of these didn’t work for me, doesn’t mean that it won’t work for you. As I started working on some of these side hustles, I learned overtime that either:
- I didn’t enjoy doing it.
- It was way too competitive.
- I Simply failed at it and lost money.
Each one of these taught me something and overtime I learned about my strengths and weaknesses, how to delegate, how to scale a business, leverage debt, how to create systems and processes and most importantly what side hustles worked best for me personally.
Let’s jump into the first one!
For the first side hustle, I spent almost 10 years doing it, and it’s.
Following “Your” Passion / Music
I know music doesn’t fit into the obvious side hustle category, so let’s call this, following your passion. Whatever your passion may be, let’s say a musician, a professional athlete, an actor or actress, whatever you can relate to, can apply here.
For me music was possibly one of the biggest side hustle regrets I’ve had, mostly because I dedicated 10 years to it. I made beats for a lot of artists, but never really made much money doing it. I was signed to the same manager as a popular producer right now who goes by the name of metro boomin. I’ve worked with very well known artists and was doing what I enjoyed.
The problem was I wasn’t making any money and when I asked myself “If I was broke doing what I enjoyed, would I still be happy?” And for me, the answer was no, I wanted to make money. After 10 years of doing this, I had to stop and it was probably one of the most difficult decisions I’ve had to make.
So if you’re looking at following your passion, ask yourself if you didn’t make any money doing it would it still make you happy, what is the probability of success and if you still want to go after it, then give it your all.
Just because my passion didn’t work out for me, doesn’t mean it won’t work out for you!
Next side hustle we have is.
Selling digital Products
The next side hustle I started was selling digital products. And I’ve created many since then. The ability to make money with a digital product is unlike any other. When I first left the music industry I decided to sell all the plugins and sounds that I’ve created and worked on all those years.
I would simply upload a sound pack to my website and sell each kit for $99. I made some sales, but ultimately quit that business because I just didn’t want to have anything else to do with that industry.
But this taught me the power of selling information and products online. A digital product is anything that is stored digitally and can be sold repeatedly. It’s easily scalable as there isn’t a lot of overhead like you get with a physical product, such as storage, warehouse or shipping cost and supplies.
You could use websites like sellfy for 19 dollars a month and store all your digital products there.
If this side hustle is something that you think is a good fit for you, then start brainstorming digital products that you may be interested in selling.
Next side hustle I’ve tried is.
Wholesaling Real Estate
Some of you may have heard of this side hustle. But for those of you who haven’t, it’s essentially where you market to the owners of houses that may need to sell for cash, because maybe they are facing foreclosure or are behind on their taxes and offer to buy their house for cash.
You would buy it at a discounted price and need to factor in the cost of repairs, once you lock it up under contract, you then sell your equitable interest in that contract to an end buyer for more than you have it under contract for. You are essentially acting like a middleman and making a spread on the difference.
So for example, a seller’s house is worth 100K after it’s been fixed up. It needs 20K in repairs, when I was wholesaling, we would take the market value, which is 100K and multiply that by 70% minus the repairs, which is 20K in this example.
So based on this scenario, we would offer 50K cash and have the seller sign a purchase agreement. Once we have a signed contract, we would sell our interest to another investor that would buy it for more. Let’s say the investor, or end buyer is willing to pay 60K, then we would profit 10K once it closes.
This is a simplified example, but I did this for a few years. And I hated it, at one point we were doing 10 deals a month and my monthly marketing spend was like 15K.
The reason this didn’t work for me is mostly because I didn’t feel right doing it, and it was very competitive and saturated.
Next side hustle was.
Flipping Houses
Some of you may have heard of this side hustle. But for those of you who haven’t, it’s essentially where you market to the owners of houses that may need to sell for cash, because maybe they are facing foreclosure or are behind on their taxes and offer to buy their house for cash.
You would buy it at a discounted price and need to factor in the cost of repairs, once you lock it up under contract, you then sell your equitable interest in that contract to an end buyer for more than you have it under contract for. You are essentially acting like a middleman and making a spread on the difference.
So for example, a seller’s house is worth 100K after it’s been fixed up. It needs 20K in repairs, when I was wholesaling, we would take the market value, which is 100K and multiply that by 70% minus the repairs, which is 20K in this example.
So based on this scenario, we would offer 50K cash and have the seller sign a purchase agreement. Once we have a signed contract, we would sell our interest to another investor that would buy it for more. Let’s say the investor, or end buyer is willing to pay 60K, then we would profit 10K once it closes.
This is a simplified example, but I did this for a few years. And I hated it, at one point we were doing 10 deals a month and my monthly marketing spend was like 15K.
The reason this didn’t work for me is mostly because I didn’t feel right doing it, and it was very competitive and saturated.
Next side hustle was.
Amazon FBA
This business is known as Fulfillment by Amazon, and it is a service that allows you to outsource order fulfillment to Amazon. So, you send your products to Amazon fulfillment centers and when a customer makes a purchase, amazon will pick, pack, and ship the order.
So, I figured I’d give it a shot, what could go wrong, right!
I did some research and used some jungle scout chrome extensions to see what gaps there were in the market that I could fill. I invested 5K in creating a DNA sensory stress ball that you can squeeze. I got the design created, hired a company overseas to create and supply me with the unit and have it sent directly to amazon.
So I launched them on amazon, sold 2 units, yup you heard me right, 2 units and the rest sat on the shelves for a long time. Eventually I had to end this business and take the loss.
I can see potential in this business and clearly there are sellers making millions doing this, it just wasn’t for me.
Next we have.
Day Trading
This is where you actively buying and selling stocks within the same day, trying to capitalize on short-term changes in price.
This was probably the worst side hustle of them all. The chances of success here are very low and no matter how good you are at indicators and charts, you would ultimately lose your money. I know there are stories of traders making a lot of money doing this. But in my experience, the only ones that make money are the ones behind the pump and dump scheme itself.
It’s better to invest in quality stocks, ETFs and dividends and play the long game.
Next we Have.
Blogging
I started a blog a while back, not this one, This one is waaaaaay better lol, and started writing articles and working on SEO and trying to get my blog to rank for certain search terms.
I started hiring writers and increasing the amount of articles I published every week.
This is a great side hustle, if you have the patience and persistence to see it through. When you have a successful blog you can monetize it in a lot of ways. From affiliate marketing, adsense, selling digital or physical products, and even sponsorships.
There are bloggers making millions. It can be done, if you stick with it and think long term.
If you’re interested in this you can start by first.
- Picking a niche
- Get the domain and web hosting
- Create your website
- DO keyword research
- Post blog articles consistently
- Work on your SEO
- Build your brand on social media
- Start building your email list and newsletter
- And monetize your traffic
Next we have
Selling on Ebay
I began selling on eBay back in 2018, it’s one of the first side hustles where I grossed almost half a million the very first year I started.
I started with just selling stuff I had around the house, to scale it by reinvesting all my profits and leveraging debt to purchase more inventory to sell online.
I started this business out of sheer desperation when I lost all that money on the house flip that went wrong. Selling on eBay is simply buying stuff for less and selling it for more online. You can go to garage sales, thrift stores, storage auctions, return pallets or even pawn shops to look for things to buy that you can sell for more online.
This was sheer sweat equity at the time and I put in a lot of work and it paid off.
Next we have.
Subscription Business
A Subscription business is where you sell a product or service and collect recurring revenue, whether it’s monthly or yearly, for continuing to provide that service or product.
There’s a lot of services and digital products that you could sell right now that people would be willing to pay you monthly for. Also, this business model is great for generating passive income.
We all have paid for a subscription before, whether it’s Netflix, dollar shave club or amazon prime. We pay a recurring fee to keep that ongoing service.
Also subscription based side hustles or businesses are great for predicating how much revenue your business will make each month.
Next we have.
YouTube
Starting a YouTube channel is one of the best side hustles you can start, in my opinion. This channel will grow soon, with your help of course. But essentially YouTube is an excellent platform to grow your core audience and make money.
You don’t need a lot of expensive equipment to start. Phones now a days have the ability to film great quality videos. If you’re willing to post videos consistently, work on getting better each video and stick with it. YouTube can pay off huge in the long run.
There are a lot of ways you can monetize the traffic that comes from YouTube including AdSense. You can sell digital products, make money with affiliate links and get paid sponsorships. I plan on posting every week and my optimistic goal is 10K subscribers by the end of this year.
I really enjoy sharing my experiences on finance and business and hopefully we can hit our goals, so we’ll see. This side hustle is still in progress.
Next we have
Buying and Selling Land
With this side hustle, you would market to owners of vacant lots and offer to purchase their land for cash. The goal here is to buy low and sell for more, or you can create some passive income from it as well by seller financing the lot to the end buyer.
This is another 6-figure business of mine and essentially you’re just turning your capital. This side hustle has some great ROI. Sometimes we can see 50 to 100% cash on cash returns on our investment. It does have overhead like marketing, ongoing property taxes and HOA.
Other than that there is no property to maintain and very little upkeep. This is a great side hustle if you want to get into real estate but don’t want to deal with the competition that comes with flipping houses and wholesaling.
Next we have
Coaching / Education
Depending on how you have this structured, you can sell this as a digital product or offer 1 on 1, group coaching or even masterminds.
For this you will need to be an expert in something. Start thinking of what you are good at and see if you can build that up and become an expert in that field. If you’re good at fitness and counting macros, you may have expert knowledge that others would be willing to pay for.
Coaches and education courses can make you millions. Start thinking about what you’re passionate about and see if you can sell that knowledge, help others reach their goals and make money at the same time.
