Learning to Hustle

My mother once told me to never depend on one source of income. I was around 10 years old at the time. It was a few years later, when I was 16 years old, that I began to take her advice seriously. I had a new car payment and a part-time job as a hostess at a local diner. It wasn’t until I started working and had a bill to pay that I began to realize how correct my mom had been.

Being under 18, however, my options were limited. So, I helped out with my uncle’s family produce stand. I worked briefly as a tagger at a butcher shop for hunters, until I learned that my dad had offered my help to his friend for free and that I wasn’t getting paid. I tried my hand at crafts. I bought antiques cheaply and tried to sell them for a profit. After about two years, I gave up.

None of it seemed to work! I would make a few dollars here and there, but usually I would just end up with junk and losing money. This was my first side hustling lesson. It is something that I find happens to many people who try to succeed at having a side gig or hustle. You have to keep looking until you find your “thing" before you could be successful.

I hated, and still hate, talking to a computer screen or into a microphone and failed miserably at drop-shipping when I tried it a year ago. I have found that you have to find something that you will be willing to put energy and time into. For some gigs, this could be especially true since they take a long while to flourish and start being money makers.

If you absolutely hate writing, then writing articles will not work, no matter how “easy" YouTube says it is. I had no patience for crafts, drop-shipping or filling out survey after survey after survey. So those side hustles didn’t work for me like they had worked for other people.

When I was 20 and living in my own apartment with very little help from family, I truly began to understand how to have multiple income sources. I began to use UserTesting.com and made a few hundred dollars in a couple years. I found that I was okay with small amounts of talking into a microphone, especially if I only had to do it once per “gig". I downloaded the highly recommended SlideJoy app that gave you gift cards and PayPal cash in return for accumulated points and never minded having to open an additional lock screen each time. I signed up with the Small Business Knowledge Center to send them my junk mail, until they didn’t send my giftcard. It actually made it rather fun to get junkmail for a while.

Thus, at 20, I began to understand what extra work I liked doing and inconveniences I could tolerate. That is the main hurdle of having a side hustles or part-time gig. You have to at least be able to tolerate it, if not generally enjoy what you do to make extra money.

Nowadays, being 27, I still work on keeping at least two personal income streams. My full-time job where I work from home and in my community as a social worker is where I make the majority of my money. I still use UserTesting.com and now use the better S’more app lock-screen for my Android smartphone. Both of those streams more than anything has helped me get everything from Starbucks using free gift cards to paying for my dog’s medications when I was in a bind.

I am still learning what types of side hustles and gigs I like. I found that I am still not into YouTube and still do not like babysitting all that much. Or pet sitting, either.

However, I did find that I like to write. Especially about things I have learned, things I have experienced and topics I have researched. The best part of side hustling is that you are always able to grow and change what you do. You don’t have to continue blogging if you grow to hate it or it doesn’t make money. They are things that you can pick-up, do for a while and stop as suddenly as you started. And that is why I will always continue having a side hustle or gig. Plus, the money never hurts!