Amid recession fears, many companies have recently announced job cuts or hiring freezes. Including Tesla’s 10% layoff target and worldwide hiring freezes, Netflix’s firing of 150 US based employees, Ford’s 580 US based salaried job cuts, the list goes on.
Many people are not prepared for the unfortunate event of job loss, where a whooping 64% of Americans live paycheque to paycheque.
In this article, we talk about the 6 side hustles that can help you build multiple income streams, so you become less reliant on the income from your day job. Number 4, 5 and 6 even have the potential to become your main source of income, allowing you to exit the daily grind and start creating something of your own.
KEY OUTLINE
- Monetize your skills and services
- Scaled impact with knowledge
- Selling stuff online
- Monetize your creativity
- Embracing the user generated content platforms
- Become a stock wizard
1. Service Provider
We live in a digital age where jobs and locations become increasingly decoupled. If you have any sort of skills, be it digital skills such as graphic design, video production, programming, or physical skills like cooking, cleaning, personal training, or, even if you simply have a beautiful voice, you will be able to sell your skills and services via online work marketplaces such as Fiverr and Upwork.
These marketplaces connect you with individuals and businesses who are willing to pay for your skillset and time to work on their projects and campaigns.
As a service provider, you can choose to take as many or as little projects, based on personal circumstances. It’s a good way to earn extra cash for those with something to offer. And even if you don’t have any particular skills to offer right now, it’s never too late to learn a new set of skills and start monetizing.
2. Knowledge Provider
Similar to the service providers, those who possess extensive knowledge in a particular field can monetize their knowledge via online learning and teaching marketplaces such as Udemy and skillshare.
Are you an expert of project management? Do you have extensive experience in interviews? Why not create a mini course and sell your knowledge online?! The beauty is that you can sell almost any sort of knowledge, including how to quit your job!
3. E-commerce
Ok, e-commerce has been around for a long time, but it’s still one of the fastest growing economies projected to surpass $7.5 Trillion USD by 2030!
Thanks to online shopping platforms such as Amazon, eBay, Etsy and many more, almost anyone can sell products online. There are many successful online sellers who generate multi-million dollar revenue every year.
The principle of becoming a successful online seller is fairly straightforward – identify in-demand products, buy in bulk from the supplier or factories at a cheap price, sell individually to online shoppers at a higher price, automate the ordering process with a website or app, promote business with online advertising, and try best to provide responsive customer support.
There are many wholesaler and supplier hubs out there (such as Alibaba and Global Sources) that put sellers directly with the suppliers and factories, the procurement process is no longer a blackbox.
With many of the biggest shopping platforms offering drop shipping, it dramatically simplified the fulfilment process. Sellers no longer need to worry about product storage and shipping to customers.
Thanks to the widely available ecommerce service platforms such as Shopify and BigCommerce, sellers of any size can literally set up their online stores in minutes and start selling products online.
4. NFT Creator
There’s a good chance that you’ve heard of the term NFT (aka Non-fungible-token) floating around the internet, especially during the past year when people start making millions of dollars selling images of mutated monkeys and pixels.
Simply put, NFTs are pieces of digital content (such as images, videos, games, etc) linked to the blockchain, the same digital database supporting cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. Although anyone can freely download these digital contents to their own computers, NFT owners in theory own the unique copies of the content stored on blockchain, and they are willing to spend big.
Justin Bieber paid $1.3M for the Bored Ape #3001 from the famous Bored Ape Yacht Club collection, and the “CROSSROAD #1/1”, a 10 second video clip, was sold for, wait for it, an eye-watering $6.6M!
Besides these top tier NFT pieces, more and more creators are now making a living selling their own artwork as NFTs.
The good news is, you don’t have to be a professional designer or artist in order to create and sell NFTs. If you can create any form of digital content, like taking pictures, shooting videos or drawing with Windows Paint, and are able to click mouse buttons following simple steps, you are ready to become a NFT creator. An Indonesian student made over $1M US Dollars selling hundreds of his selfies.
What are you waiting for? It’s time to get creative and give this NFT thingy a try!
5. Content Creator
Ever since the very first video uploaded to YouTube featuring YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim, YouTube, or social media in general, has evolved the way we generate and consume information. This evolution not only created a trillion dollar industry filled with our beloved social media platforms, it also groomed a generation of content creators and social influencers whose job is to influence the public through their contents.
Many content creators amass enough audience to generate passive advertising income from their contents. Those more successful content creators with a large audience base can even generate millions of dollars of ad revenue every year. As an example, Ryan Kaji, a 9 years old YouTuber famous for unboxing and playing toys on camera, has a 30M subscriber base on YouTube and collectively earned over $30M dollars off his contents.
The beauty of being a content creator is its low barrier to entry. Anyone can pick up a cell phone and practically shoot videos. Start recording and share your ideas on social media today! Who knows, you might become the next MrBeast!
6. Stock Trader
Stock trading is the behavior of buying and selling company stocks and making a profit from price fluctuations.
Due to high inflation, rising interest rate, Russia Ukraine war and a potential recession, the stock market has been very volatile since late 2021. Although many fearful long term investors are pulling their money out of the market and bracing for a potential recession, the volatile market environment is precisely where short-term stock traders thrive.
Although stock trading is risky and most new traders lose money, traders who manage to become consistently profitable can usually live off trading income with very flexible hours (a couple of hours a day, or less). Trading skills require years of continuous learning and development, and even that doesn’t guarantee profitability and success. But for those who managed to make it through, trading could be the golden ticket to freedom. It’s the kind of skill that allows you to make money almost any time, anywhere.
There are many examples of successful traders out there who have generated 6 to 8 figure profit and counting. Ross Cameron, Steven Dux, ClayTrader, Shark and SWang from SMB Capital, just to name a few.
Closing Thoughts
Imagine financial success is a table full of delicious food and luxury utensils, and the table legs represent various income streams that afford all the goodies. Now what will happen if the table only has one leg? What if your entire livelihood is dependent on one single income stream such as your day job? That sounds like an enormous risk to me, especially during the current economic environment.
It’s never too late to be prepared, to learn new skills and to start diversifying your income streams. Safeguard yourself from the unexpected.