9 Side Hustle Ideas You Can Start Today (Beginner to Expert)

looking to make some extra cash this year I have nine side hustle ideas from beginner to expert that you can start doing today whether you are looking to earn extra income for a summer vacation you want to boost up your savings account or you are looking to beef up your marketable skills starting a side hustle might be your way to get there now I'm not going to sugarcoat anything here as most of you already know none of these are going to make you rich you are not going to be raking in thousands of dollars a week and you do have to pay taxes on your earnings but if you need some extra cash to pay for groceries if you're trying to create a marketable skill that you can fall back on in the case of a layoff or you truly just want some extra fun money and have time to spare then this episode is for you this is Rich Girl's Guide where we demystify the world of personal finance to help you create a financially successful in fulfilling life let's Dive Right In beginning with our no experience needed side hustles and this first one I doubt you have ever heard of Mind Sumo now this website mind sumo.com posts challenges that are sponsored by companies and the challenges can range from answering questions about your food preferences pitching low alcoholic beverage ideas to answering the question what is an idea for a sustainable and cost effective alternative to mineral oil obviously there can be quite the range of challenges is posted on this website some will require a lot of knowledge or at least some research ability on your part While others can be pitched by anyone at all within just a few minutes I will say based on personal experience the easier challenges tend to be harder to win since there are more participants and the cash prizes also tend to be less for example there's an open challenge right now asking for your opinion on the future of Footwear you only have to answer a few questions but the highest payout is about $16 compared to the alternative mineral oil question which is more difficult to answer but has a cash prize of $300 I actually used to do quite a lot of these challenges back in college and it's been a few years since I've have completed any but I will say I did make at least a few hundred completing some of these challenges I would just weigh the potential payout versus the time you're putting in if you can whip out a few challenges while while you're watching TV great otherwise if you're tight on time it might be more worthwhile to try out some of the next side hustles real quick I just wanted to say thank you so much for listening to today's episode if you're enjoying this content please consider hitting that subscribe or follow button wherever you are listening right now I'm so close to 200 subscribers on YouTube and I appreciate it more than you know all right back to the good stuff next up is our second side hustle idea dog walker and pet sitter okay I know this is not groundbreaking at all but it can be a great way to boost your weekly income this was my very first side hustle back when I was in Middle School I would sit for neighbors dogs which eventually led to me walking them especially over the summer when I had time in the middle of the day this is a great beginner level side hustle because you don't need a car if you are sitting for your neighbor's pets you can Market your services through flyers and Facebook groups you can be any age and you can actually make pretty decent money depending on how many clients you have the average rate I see in my area is between $15 to $30 a visit obviously depending on the animal and what you are doing if you're taking a dog out on a 30-minute walk you're going to need to charge more than if you're just checking on a cat and refilling the water bowl if you want to take it up a notch my third side hustle is dog and pet boarding now I separated this out from dog walking for a few reasons the obvious one being you need the space and the ability to actually fit these pets in your home if you live in a small apartment or don't have a private yard or someone in your home is allergic to animals this might be a bit harder to pull off now the upside here is that you aren't the one having to drive around to your client's homes potentially multiple times a day they are actually bringing their furry friends to you now the rates are again going to vary drastically based on your location but I would say on average you will be able to charge between 30 to $60 a night which if someone's dropping their pet off for a week vacation that can rack up pretty quickly I would just do a quick Google search for average boarding prices in your area and then you can adjust your prices accordingly now from my experience there are three main types of people who look for private in home pet boarding as opposed to a normal boarding facility first they are looking for a cheaper alternative second they are unable to find a boarding facility that will take their pet either because they reached out too close to the dates they needed boarding or they have a specialty pet like a hedgehog or a bunny and lastly you have owners who do not want their pet typically dogs to be in a typical boarding facility where there are tons of different breeds lots of noise a large ratio of pets to humans you get the draft side note I actually have a family member whose pet has anxiety and the pet will refuse to eat if they go to a normal boarding facility so this family member has to find someone to actually come to their home they can't even drop this animal off at somebody else's home or else they just will not eat the entire time they're gone a couple of tips here if possible I would try to Target customers who are specifically looking not to board their pets in a boarding facility as opposed to the ones who are looking for a cheaper alternative or reached out to the boarding facility too late my mom actually has a dog walking and boarding service and she is very very picky about who she takes on as a client the people who are looking for the cheapest possible price tend to text at very odd hours of the day and night they will try and book you last minute instead of reaching out ahead of time they will also cancel at the last possible second even if you have a cancellation policy and of course it can be difficult to get these clients to pay in order to Target the owners you actually want you can do a few things charge a premium price require an initial meet and greet and require an initial deposit before any services are rendered all right Switching gears a bit for side hustle number four wedding professional assistant bear with me on this one there are a lot of professionals that book weddings florists photographers DJs event planners venues bartenders bands I'm sure I'm forgetting something but there's a lot of professionals now a lot of these people actually work alone instead of in a set team for instance a single photographer will book a wedding a single florist will book a wedding Etc and then they will hire freelance workers to assist them the day of the wedding I know photographers and videographers who will hire people to help carry their equipment Flores who will hire people to help load up a van and then help unpack the arrangements at the venue day of coordinators might hire someone to just be an extra set of hands and be in standby in case they need them for anything there are a couple of great things about this particular side hustle first you can book really last minute gigs that pay a premium because it is so last minute if a wedding coordinator hired a freelance worker 2 months in advance but they ended up dropping out just a few days before the wedding you better believe that coordinator is going to pay a bit extra to find someone to fill the position second you have the opportunity to learn about the wedding industry and whatever field you are assisting in and you can then use that experience and knowledge to work your way up the ladder for example if you start out assisting a photographer by just carrying around their equipment maybe after a few weddings you can see if anyone would let you Shadow as a second shooter or even a third shooter yes for free or for very minimal pay and start to build up your own portfolio so that you can then Market your services at a higher rate as a second photographer I would again go to Facebook and find local groups for wedding professionals and creative professionals I have personally found 95% of my freelance photography work from Facebook groups like these now the hourly rates are going to be vastly different maybe 20 an hour as a an extra pair of hands up to $50 an hour as a second shooter okay so these next five ideas are increasingly more I don't want to say difficult but they require more professionalism and are geared more towards someone with an entrepreneurial spirit and someone that's probably out of high school all right so the fifth side hustle is virtual assistant the nice thing about being a VA is that you can do it remotely meaning you can generally do this even if you have a full-time job depending on the hours and there are many different types of businesses looking for virtual assistance meaning you can pick a type of business that you may already be familiar with now if I were to look for a virtual assistant position which disclaimer I've never been a VA I would probably not go through an agency I would actually again probably start on Facebook there are tons of groups for small businesses and small business owners are constantly posting opportunities for these kinds of positions job opportunities can range from a few hours needed a week think replying to emails on behalf of the business and doing Simple administrative task all the way up to 20 to 30 hours a week needed doing more intense admin work pay again depends on the scope of the arrangement I've seen hourly rates as low as $13 an hour which to me seems like pretty low all the way up to $25 an hour for more intense work couple things to keep in mind here businesses can use usually hire International vas for like literal criminal amounts think like $5 an hour so when you are pitching yourself for these kinds of positions make sure you are selling yourself to the best of your ability use correct grammar and punctuation let them know you're up to date on professional lingo but can also decipher the trendy genen Z lingo anything you can sprinkle in to let them know you are bringing something to the table will help you get your foot in the door my next side hustle idea isn't really a step up from virtual assisting I find it pretty much on par with the skills and experience needed so side hustle number six social media manager for small businesses now before I have a professional social media manager screaming in the comments I am not talking about creating a brand creating campaigns or doing anything that requires marketing experience I am more so talking about the mom and pop shop on the corner that has a handful of employees the owners do not know how to operate social media and they are really just looking for someone who knows how to log into Instagram and post a real nothing fancy nothing crazy literally just basic social media knowledge that anyone under the age of 35 should be able to do in their sleep the easiest way to find these kinds of positions would be good oldfashioned door knocking I would stock your local mom and pop shops on social media and see if any of them lack a social media presence and if they do start pitching yourself again the hourly pay rate is going to vary depending on the business and their social media needs and I've seen positions as low as $15 an hour and as high as $25 an hour okay so stepping it up a bit from social media management again we are talking very lowlevel social media posts would be side hustle number seven creating content for brands or YouTube channels now I'm not talking about like videos or anything like that necessarily I'm talking more so about creating YouTube thumbnails YouTube banners Instagram posts Pinterest Graphics you name it you can sell it now the reason this is a step up from a social media manager is because in order to make money doing this you have to create quality content your mom and pop shop is not really going to care about the engagement or the wow factor of your posts they more so want to make sure their customers know that they'll be closing early on Thursday to to bingo night or that a sale will be happening this weekend on the flip side if you are creating YouTube thumbnails and selling those services on a website like Fiverr for $20 a pop you better have some great examples and great content in order to get any business now if you use a site like canva which is what I use to create my YouTube content there's already a ton of pre-made free templates that you can tweak as needed for your clients or you can even pay a month L fee and get access to a ton more premium content while depending on your skills you can probably do a lot with the free stuff depending on how many clients you get it might be worth paying for the premium content the nice thing about using a site like Fiverr to Market your services is that you can get extremely Niche let's say you are really good at creating thumbnails for cooking channels you will attract the creators looking for your exact style and it will be really easy to bang out a ton of orders in a short period of time the harder part is nailing down your style and attracting those customers if you're not sure what kind of services you would want to offer I would recommend scrolling through Fiverr and browse what kinds of content people are looking to Outsource okay so again getting a bit more skilled with side hustle number eight building out websites for small businesses now let me start this by saying I am not very tech savvy website building is absolutely not my forte but I've been able to build two of my own websites for my own businesses yes I contacted customer support quite a bit yes I watched many hours of tutorials on YouTube but when I tell you if I was able to create these sites you better believe that you can create something similar I personally used show it as my website provider or whatever you call them and they had pre-made website templates for free that I was able to tweak by adding my own images adding my own copy changing the fonts and the colors Etc depending on what the small business you're working with what website provider they're using more than likely they're going to also have free templates as well there are tons of other providers that do the same thing I know squares is a really popular one Weebly is one that I have used in the past and I'm sure there are oodles upon oodles more if you're a creative type and you enjoy tinkering around and Building Things in real life I promise you can figure out how to build a decent looking functioning website now the people in businesses that are looking to hire someone to build out a website are most likely a looking to trade their time for money AKA they probably could figure out how to build it but they don't want to spend the time learning how to do it themselves B are not techsavvy at all and really need the help in order to have a functioning website or C want to pay a premium to have an elevated professional looking website if I were you and I'm just starting out in the website building game I would probably Target those first two business owners you can start with either a free website giveaway so that you can get some practice while also attracting new customers or build out a website for yourself and use that as your example or portfolio website once you actually have something to show prospects you can then start to charge really cheap prices to gain some more experience and start building up more of a portfolio and and eventually you can start to charge more I've seen nonprofessionals charge upwards of $1,000 per website and the clients were perfectly happy while this one may take time to build the necessary skills and attract the right clients you have the ability to turn this into a flourishing business that you can do while traveling while working full-time or have something solid to fall back on in the case you get laid off or decide to quit your day job last but certainly not least is my personal favorite side Hustle something that I still do to this day side hustle number nine photography now before you roll your eyes and say that is a way too hard to call side hustle I promise it is not I have no formal photography education I slowly built up my gear and my equipment as paying gigs came in and I started off taking pictures like this if you're watching through a podcast app you can watch this on YouTube to see my early work firsthand it's not pretty and I have since been able to take pictures like this much better while I have paid for a few courses and I did go to one wedding photography Workshop I can pretty much say without a doubt that you can learn everything for free on YouTube networking with professionals and other side Hustlers in your area whether it's through an in-person Meetup or even just on Facebook I promise I'm not sponsored by Facebook is a way more valuable than paying for any Workshop conference or online course the major thing you will need need to get started is of course a camera while I'm not going to give out any camera recommendations today my recommendations are hella expensive and I'm not very well versed in the lower level cameras these days the great news is that you can go to YouTube to find out what photographers recommend there will be in-depth reviews telling you the pros and cons giving you info on what settings to use to achieve a light and Airy look as opposed to a moody Vibe which lenses will give you a blurry background CR the best time of Daya shoot golden hour and so much more information than you could ever possibly use without going into too much detail this is how I got started I was gifted a beginner level DSLR camera and started taking pictures of my friends in college just for fun we shot around campus Because campus was pretty and it was right there someone had seen a picture of my friend that my friend had posted and they reached out asking if I would take college graduation pictures around campus like I had taken of my friends and so I said sure why not and I started charging $50 for a full 2hour portrait session with edited photos printing rights the whole shebang from that point forward twice a year typically winter and summer which were my off Seasons I would look at how many sessions I had done the previous season how much my work had improved and what new equipment I wanted to invest in I would then raise my prices just slightly to accommodate all of the above and start booking for the next season at the slightly higher price I now shoot portrait sessions at $400 a pop weddings at $3,500 and I do all kinds of in between work mini sessions Boutique Partnerships bdir packages and yes I do still second shoot weddings as a freelancer all right guys I really hope this episode gave you some ideas and got your creative juices flowing drop a comment and let me know what side hustle sounds the most doable to you and if you're going to be trying any of them out don't forget to subscribe or follow wherever you are listening right now and as always I will have a brand new video out this Thursday and another full episode on Monday later rich girls

Channel: Rich Girls' Guide

Views: 600

Keywords: personal finance, money, investing 101, how to budget my paycheck, caleb hammer, stock market investing, habit stacking, build your net worth, how to get rich, dave ramsey, how to get out of debt, stock investing for beginners, budgeting for beginners, budget with me, how to invest, personal financial planning course, best credit cards 2024, money management tips, personal development plan, self improvement, financial planning, finance, atomic habits habit stacking

Id: 2tSWJ5Vyar8

Length: 20min 29sec (1229 seconds)

Published: Mon May 13 2024