Side Hustles For Dummies. Alan R. Simon
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services.
Online marketplaces aren’t limited to professional services side hustles, either:
If you do dog walking or pet sitting for your side hustle, you can list your services on Rover, Holidog, or Puppy Friends Social Club.
If you provide home-related services, you can go to market through Angi or Thumbtack.
If you do freelance hair styling or tutoring, or provide dance lessons, you can post your services on the aforementioned Fiverr under the “Lifestyle” category.
Multilevel marketing organizations
MLM organizations — also called network marketing companies — are the most controversial topic in the world of side hustles. Some people swear that MLMs are the absolute best way to do a side hustle, while others swear at MLMs and regret the day they ever signed up for one. So, what’s the story with MLMs?
Suppose you’re interested in selling exercise clothing, activewear, and leisurewear for a side hustle. You could do what Breanna did:
Build your own website or storefront.
Decide which specific products you want to sell.
Find suppliers for the products you want to sell.
Figure out the tricks of social-media advertising to reach potential customers.
Pack and ship orders if you’re handling your own inventory.
On the other hand, you could find an MLM that markets the type of activewear and leisurewear that you want to sell and then join that MLM.
If you join an MLM, you make money from selling products to other people. But you also make money by bringing other people into the company and typically by receiving a small portion of the sales made by each person in your network. Basically, the larger your network, the more money you can make from products that other people sell.
FIGURE 2-2: A typical MLM hierarchical structure.
You need to do your homework and determine
How to figure out if a given MLM’s compensation model is good for you
Whether you can make any money if you’re way, way down the sales ladder
How sales territories are allocated
If you’re required to purchase a monthly allocation of products, or if you can purchase products as you sell them
From a side-hustle perspective, MLMs have some interesting advantages and possible disadvantages. On the plus side, you can find an MLM for almost anything that you want to sell for your side hustle: clothing, health and wellness products, cleaning supplies, cooking-related products, makeup, and even (ahem) “adult” products. If you can imagine something, you almost certainly can find an MLM to join!
Deciding Whether to Pursue a Side Hustle Related to Your Full-Time Job
When I first jumped into the side-hustle game, I stuck with something very close to my day job as an Air Force computer systems officer by starting a small computer consulting and software development firm. I also began teaching and again stayed with tech topics for the classes that I taught. Then, when I wrote my first book, I once again stayed close to home, synergy-wise, and authored a book called How to be a Successful Computer Consultant (McGraw-Hill).
Your side-hustle adventures may also have a high degree of synergy with your day job.
Jack, the Scottsdale software developer who is doing part-time community college teaching, aimed for synergy with his side hustle, as did Mark, the Boston accountant who is creating a series of small business accounting videos that he’ll try to monetize.
But what about Mark’s coworker Miguel, who will also be creating and uploading videos that he hopes to monetize, but whose videos are about bartending and related topics? Accounting … bartending … nope, not even close!
Your side hustle can be closely related to what you do for your day job, or it can be totally different. Miguel opted for the totally-different fork in the road, as did Cindy, the Seattle mechanical engineer (though in Cindy’s case, she’ll actually be doing bartending).
In my case, I eventually got burned out writing business and tech books, but I enjoyed the process of writing. Because I read a ton of fiction when I was a traveling consultant,