10 Best Side Hustle Ideas: How I Earned $7,800 in a Month

Everyone talks about side hustle ideas and passive income as a way to make a little extra money, but there's another very important reason you should start your own side hustle business.

Freelancing or independent work has exploded in recent years, with more than 60 million Americans now working for pay.

Companies are loving the trend because they don't have to pay a lot of benefits and taxes…so it won't be long before freelancing becomes the norm.

Starting a side business now will prepare you for when the shift occurs. Even if you're not concerned about the impending job-pocalypse, starting a side hustle idea is a great way to achieve financial freedom, a way to make a little extra to reach your dreams faster and avoid living paycheck-to-paycheck.

The most common question I get about starting freelancing is where to begin and how to find that perfect side hustle strategy that will allow you to turn five hours a week into a few hundred dollars.

So I've taken all of the income sources I'm familiar with and narrowed them down to my top ten.

I've used six of these side hustle ideas and make money from at least four of them every month. In fact, I earned over $7,200 in March, including $600 in a single day.

Your monthly income will fluctuate slightly, but if you combine a few of these ideas, you'll have a reliable source of income.

Now, I don't want you to expect a'side-hustle' to be simple.

Some of these ideas will require some work, but the income will grow over time, and some can become passive income in as little as a few months.

In a year, I increased my online income to over $2,000 per month, and within three years, I was earning over $6,000 per month.

I tried to exclude traditional jobs from the list, as well as all of the side jobs advertised on Craigslist. Everyone knows you can make money cleaning people's homes, but do you really want to have pruny fingers for 10 hours a week?

I limited this list of side hustle ideas to income sources you may not have considered, those that have worked for me, and those that work the fastest.

I'll explain how to get started as well as how much you can expect to earn with each side income strategy.

I'll also reveal three secrets to side hustle success, as well as three critical keys to making money.

1. Become a Notary Witness

When someone signs a contract, they must have a notary present to witness and sign the document.

It takes almost no time to become a notary, and you can earn around $100 per contract signing that takes less than half an hour.

The requirements will vary by state, but for the most part, you will need to complete an online course that lasts only a few hours and pay a registration fee.

You will also need special insurance through a bonding agency, but the best part is that most of these agencies will set you up with your state application and all fees for less than $100.

When you become a notary, real estate agents and other businesses will invite you to witness their signings.

You can easily do three to five of these per week as a side hustle and earn $100 per one.

2. Real Estate

I've been investing in real estate since I got out of the Marine Corps, and I love it as a long-term wealth generator, but with this strategy, it also makes a great side income. We're talking about wholesaling real estate, which is similar to acting as a middleman between buyers and sellers.

You find properties that are priced below what you believe they are worth and enter into a contract with the seller to purchase the house within a month or so. You then set out to find someone who will buy your house at the same time as you but at a higher price.

So no money, or perhaps only a few thousand dollars, has been exchanged when you sign the contract with the seller.

The earnest money from your buyer more than compensates for this, so you don't need a large bankroll to get started.

You arrange for the closings to take place at the same time, so you may only own the property for five minutes before signing it over to your buyer.

I would recommend getting acquainted with real estate investing first, perhaps through a few flips or rentals, as this will provide you with the experience you need to spot great deals that you can immediately resell.

That wholesaling side hustle is huge, but this one you can set up and start in a day.

3. Online English Teaching.

I ran a few sites through their paces and was assigned to students and making money in less than a week. It's a good idea to get some training first, but any native English speaker can learn how to teach in less than a day, and there's a lot of demand for it right now.

You can teach independently on Facebook or Skype, gain students through a blog or marketing, or simply sign up for one of the dozens of sites such as Preply, Verbling, and Tutor.com.

All of these sites are legitimate and will provide you with as many hours as you require.

You'll make between $15 and $50 for a 30-minute session, and most students will need three to five hours per week, so you don't need a lot of students to make a good living.

Those are the three keys to a successful side hustle. I'll share some tips at the end of the video that will really help you with this next idea, help you make money, and avoid some of the biggest blunders, so stay tuned for those.

4. Affiliate Promotion

This one will work best if you already have a blog or another online traffic source, but it can also be done with just your social media accounts.

Sign up for affiliate marketing networks such as CJ Affiliates or FlexOffers.

These are websites that link businesses with bloggers, YouTubers, and other publishers. You join an affiliate programme and receive a link to a company's product.

You can include that link in a blog post, a Facebook or Twitter post, or pretty much anywhere else someone who might need that product might come across it.

If someone clicks on that link and then makes a purchase, you will be paid a commission. There are a few things to keep in mind when it comes to affiliate marketing in order to be successful.

You only want to promote products that you have used and know work well.

Pitching subpar products for the sake of making a buck will turn off your readers and friends.

I make around $3,000 per month from affiliate marketing through my blogs.

It will vary from month to month, as with many of these income sources, but it takes very little time and adds up quickly when combined with a few other side hustles.

Our next side hustle is something I enjoy doing more as a hobby than as a source of steady income.

5. Flea Market Flipping

It's really any reselling strategy that involves purchasing items on consignment, secondhand, or elsewhere for resale on Craigslist or eBay.

I spoke with Rob and Melissa of the Flea Market Flipper YouTube channel about their full-time flipping strategy that supports their family.

You might want to start with a specific product type, such as toys or electronics, or simply any niche where you can learn prices so you can recognise a good deal when you see it.

You can also use apps or the eBay website to figure out how much you can get for a resale.

Finding like-new items locally at flea markets and thrift stores and then reselling on eBay at a national level appears to be the best strategy.

Because you have a larger market in which to sell your finds, you can find people willing to pay more for them.

I prefer to do this as a fun weekend activity with my family rather than as a full-fledged side hustle business.

On a Sunday, we'll go to flea markets and other places on our list, just looking around and spending time together.

I can usually find one or two items to resell online in a couple of hours.

6.Rideshare

Even though some ride-hailing companies are experiencing difficulties in some cities, you can earn more than $20 per hour using apps like Uber and Lyft.

What I like about working as a rideshare driver is that it is simple to do in your spare time. The apps function in such a way that you can turn on and off your service at any time, and they will match you with fares.

Ridesharing website RideGuru calculated how much drivers earned on a typical five-minute drive, including the initial charge, metered fare, and service fees.

It ranged from $19.89 per hour on Uber to $26 per hour on SitBaq and $36 per hour driving a traditional cab.

Here, you'll want to follow some of our side hustle business rules, which I'll go over later, such as treating it like a business and deducting it from your taxes.

One of the most common complaints about ride-share driving is the wear and tear on your vehicle, but you can still make a lot of money if you plan ahead of time.

7. Blogging and YouTube

I do both of these and rely on them for the majority of my income.

These will be great marketing for any of the other side hustle ideas, but they will also work well on their own.

You can sign up for a Google Adsense account and add ad boxes to your blog, or you can do it all automatically on YouTube once you reach 1,000 subscribers.

I earn about $0.01 per view on both the blogs and the YouTube channel, which may not seem like much but can be a reliable source of income.

I get just under 70,000 visitors per month to my blogs and about 117,000 YouTube video views per month, for a total of nearly $1,900 per month, not including all of the free marketing I need for products or other business ideas.

That kind of traffic doesn't happen overnight, but you can easily reach tens of thousands of people in a year.

You can start getting sponsorship deals to talk about a company's products in addition to the money you make from advertising. I get paid $500 per video on YouTube to mention someone's product, and I know others who charge thousands of dollars for a sponsorship deal.

8.Online classes

This is the next step in your online income because you transition from reselling other people's products to reselling your own.

Of course, the payoff on your own course is significantly higher.

I've seen other bloggers make between $350 and $1,500 per month on courses, so if you don't think you have anything to teach, reconsider. Look at some of these Udemy courses from creators, Rubik's cube simple and easy, what to text a girl you like…that one's a best seller, incredible.

You can easily create a course using sites like Teachable and Thinkrific, and you can basically repurpose a lot of the material from your blog.

Believe me, if you talk about anything for a year, you'll become an expert and learn what people are looking for in the topic.

That will give you your business idea, and then you can look into other courses to see what other creators are saying and what you can add.

Expect to spend 40 to 60 hours creating a typical 10-hour video course, but then make money every month for years.

Making $500 per month on the course for three years equals eighteen grand and hundreds of dollars per hour on the time it took to create.

9.Self-publishing

This is essentially the same as the online course we just discussed, but much faster and easier.

In fact, if you create an online course, you can use the transcript as a book to supplement your income.

The same concepts apply here, except you don't need to be a video expert. Through January 2017, I had published ten books in just over two years and was earning just under $2,000 per month.

I spend $200 per month on Amazon marketing the books, but that's it.

The best part about self-publishing is that it is almost entirely passive income once the book is released.

It is extremely simple to develop your book idea.

Begin with a transformation, something readers want or need, and then work backwards through the steps necessary to get there.

Each of those steps is a chapter in your book, and each one can be published as a blog post. This will not only help you stay on track to finish the book, but each of the blog posts will also serve as easy marketing sources once the book is finished; simply go back through and link your Amazon book page into the post.

After that, simply format your book for publication and upload it to one of a dozen sites such as Amazon, CreateSpace, or Smashwords.

You can easily write two or three books per year in your spare time, earning up to $600 per month as a side hustle.

10.Virtual or in-person companion

It may sound strange, but it's really no different than other coaching or tutoring ideas that have worked for years.

You're basically just lending someone an ear and giving them advice for an hourly fee. You can go it alone on this one, as you can with online tutoring, or you can join a site that will match you with people.

The sites have some how-to content and rules, so it may be best to start there to get a feel for it before venturing out on your own.

In either case, you'll earn between $15 and $50 per hour and be able to work your own hours. Now that you've got a solid list of side hustle ideas to work with, there are three keys to making any of them a success.

You probably won't want to try all of the income sources, nor will they all work for you, but these three strategies will help you make more money no matter what you choose.

The first is that you must approach it as if it were a business.

You can implement any of these ideas in just a few hours per week, but you must approach it as if it were a business.

That entails learning how the business operates and the various roles you must play in each.

You're not just writing books to publish, for example.

You must be a marketer, a manager, and an accountant.

These aren't just side hustle ideas; they're businesses that will generate assets that you can own and profit from for years.

Learning what works in each of these income ideas and treating it like a business will put you way ahead of the amateurs and make you more money.

The second step is to take advantage of all available tax breaks.

This is a significant part of owning your own business, as well as a significant portion of the return.

Small businesses may not make a lot of money on a monthly basis, but taking advantage of some of these small business benefits will protect your full-time income and make a significant difference.

The first step is to keep track of everything you spend money on.

You can deduct any expenses related to your side business from your income, which means you can save some of your regular income from taxes as well.

Even some of the money you spend on utilities and property taxes can be deducted from your taxable income. You should also consider a self-employed IRA plan. This is a type of retirement investing account in which you can put your side hustle earnings and not pay income taxes on them until you retire.

The contribution limit on this one is much higher than the limit on other accounts such as a 401K or regular IRA, so it can be a great resource for avoiding a lot of taxes.

The final key to side hustle success is perseverance and consistency.

That may not appear to be a secret, but you'd be surprised how many people start and stop their side hustles within a month, or who switch from one income stream to another without really developing any.

Your monthly income will not skyrocket overnight from any of these sources, but give it six months and you'll have an income stream that pays you every month. Combine three or four of these with just five hours per week and you can easily make three or four thousand dollars per month within a year.

That's a full-time salary from part-time work. Few of these side hustle ideas will make you rich, but combine a few and you'll have your own businesses, your own assets that will make you money every month.

That monthly income may fluctuate a little, as the day I made $600 was followed by a few days where I only made a few hundred, but it adds up to a fantastic income.

Choose which income sources appeal to you, invest some time in learning a little about each, and you'll have a thriving side hustle business in no time.