The Not-So-Easy Side Hustle

We all want it. The quick and easy ‘how I made 10,000 in 30 days’ side hustle. You see ads everywhere promising the unimaginable, making thousands of dollars with no time, money or effort. We know in our heart of hearts this is too good to be true, but yet we believe it. We believe that if we click on a post they will tell us the secret to becoming rich. My question is: if it were true, wouldn’t everyone be rich?

I, of course am guilty myself. I go on Pinterest scouring through all these pins how a certain nobody made 10,000 in three months. I read the article, but it never gives any “real” advice. They go on and on (and on) on how they never thought it would be so quick and easy, and now they can pay all their bills and life is good! Look at me while I sit here on the beach and the money is pouring in! But wait a minute WHAT exactly did you do to get there? When you finally find someone who is willing to giving you some little scrap of information it is usually so vague that you are left scratching your head screaming to yourself.

I am guilty, I have tried to piece together these little scraps of information and tried to make some money with side hustles. I have signed up for surveys which bloggers have said they have made hundreds of dollars a month on, only to find out that each survey pays .01! (Only if you qualify). I have tried to sign up for focus groups in which I never qualify (I must be extremely boring). I have signed up for gigs that promise to pay me big bucks to listen to extremely bad music, listen to phone calls, and yes, if I send my junk email to a certain place, I will get paid hundreds! (I’m still wailing).

Then there is the gold standard to side hustles. Everyone says to write a blog. A blog can make tens of thousands in a month! Has anyone thought about this? Granted, there are a lot of useless blogs out there, mine included, do we need MORE? BTW, I have not made one dime on my blog, and probably never will. Do we need more useless material clogging up the interwebs? I can guarantee you out of the thousands or millions of blogs out there, maybe 1% are profitable.

Then there are the “join my class and I will show you how I made 1 million dollars in 6 months, IT’S FREE!”. Of course, the class is free, because you brag about how you made all this money selling books that I have never heard of, and give me nothing of substance, but if I give you 1,000 of my VERY HARD-earned dollars, I can have access to your staff who will make it work for me. Uh, no thank you, I think your pockets are stuffed enough with the average American’s money who can’t afford it in the first place.

I guess the moral of this story is: there are no get rich quick schemes. If there there was, everyone would be rich. If you want to start a blog, start it, but know 99% of the time there is no money to be made (vouching for that right now). I highly doubt you can make 200.000 a year selling journal printables online. THINK ABOUT IT. If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.

End of rant.