Side hustles that make you money

[verybighouseinthecountry]

Anyone have a side hustle that makes decent money? By decent I mean NMW or above, not £50 a month on Etsy selling crocheted hats.

I’m a charity funding coordinator as my main job and do the same as freelance for a couple of smaller local charities. It doesn’t bring in the big bucks but it helps. I’ve committed to help them for a year and will see what happens after that.

Someone by me collects things people want to sell on Vinted and deals with all the admin. She lists them, posts them etc. Takes 20%.

It's not going to be a long term thing for her because people only have so much stuff but at the moment she's earning £600+ a month for maybe 2 days work.

I've used her because I cant be faffed with Vinted and have been very happy to pay 20% to leave her to deal with it and not to have to keep the stuff in my house.

Virtual PA. I do a few hours a week around my main job (which is also a PA role).

I’m signed up to some market research sites but not getting anywhere. I’ve answered their ‘call-outs’ several times for hour long interviews that would give about £60. All that happens is I give loads of info to the screening process about my salary, investments etc but then don’t get an interview. So am considering not bothering again.

You could try registering with the Rover app for cat and dog sitting

Or KoruKids for after school child care?

I'm retired but have two money making hustles both of which are natural extensions of my hobbies so don't feel like work. Neither of them is going to make me rich but keep me in beer and holidays.

I trade in vintage items for the home and garden. I go to jumble sales, auctions, car boots, vintage fairs, charity shops, skip dive and get free to collector stuff. I take stalls at vintage fairs and brocantes and sell what I've gathered plus some of my own paintings and things made with vintage fabric. I get old fabric sample books cheaply from the local curtain shop and make tote bags which sell really well. I've always loved old things and like picking out things people will buy and putting them together in a pretty way.

I also run an honesty stall in the lane outside my cottage. I sell eggs from my hens, plants, veg and flowers that I grow, my home made jam, marmalade and chutneys. I'm currently selling home made holly wreaths too.

What would you like to know?

About £100 a month at the moment, but after I’ve made them I do absolutely zero advertising of them.

I'm confused - hasn't Emma Barnett and her husband just done this with their brand of colouring books and he's left his job to run it full time because it's making so much?

Following as I would like to make some extra money.

Isn’t this market completely saturated now though?

Yeah that’s one person though. They are also probably ploughing hours and money into marketing and advertising. It’ll be a full time job for them, not a side hustle.

To make a decent income you need to have the money to put into it. It’s not as easy as creating a book then plopping it up on KDP and expecting it to make you loads of money. Visibility and the Amazon algorithm is complicated to navigate and makes marketing a real skill. Same with Facebook marketing etc.

Plus there’s the legal side of the images you’re using and if you put one foot wrong Amazon will shut your account down and won’t let you set up a new one.

Well I’m making a little bit of extra cash without advertising after I publish them. You don’t have to be a number one best seller to make some money

That pretty decent tbf. I guess my point is, if you were to start now, is the market too saturated for a newbie?

How many books have you published? I guess it helps if you’ve got a high volume?

ETA is it worth the hours you put in?

Ooh, I'd quite like to do both of those things, sounds lovely!

Ohhh I see.

I am quite new. Only started this year.

I would say go through the best sellers in a category, say adult colouring books, and look for similar topics that appear 2 or more times. Then make your own but make it better. Scour the negative reviews to see what they’re getting ‘wrong’ and make yours better. I found a puzzle book that didn’t even have the answers inside and it was a best seller (top 100 in that category). so I made mine better. I did link to my books once but Mumsnet removed the thread 🙈

Don’t be afraid to use AI to tweak your Amazon titles and description and ask for it to be keyword dense.

Dont overthink it. Your first book might never sell. Or it might make you daily sales. You just don’t know.

Good for you! I’m glad it’s working out for you, long may it continue!

I met a retired policeman once who said the best way to make money as an eBay seller is to deal in something lightweight, easy to store and post, with a mid price range and a niche market. He claimed to make a good income selling vintage ladies' stockings! I don't know where he sourced them from - he was a tad creepy. But if I was looking for a side hustle, I think I'd go for eBay or Vinted selling and look for something that fits his criteria. Or, as a PP suggested, offer to sell for others and take a % cut.

Well great work sounds perfect. It’s about topping up hope it keeps going for you.

I’d like to know about the design element. English is t my first language so I’d like to try it with inspirational quotes for my first language but while I have the quotes, I’m bloody useless on Canva and, in fact, the AI tool and Canva must have bloody caught my unintelligence as it got steadily shitter the more I tried. Honestly looked like a drunk spider had attempted to dance across the design page.

I make two-three hundred a month on Etsy, and I also sell on eBay.

I have a niche though - not crocheted hats!

Tangy are you making a decent income? Im
close to retirement but for various reasons, have a large credit card bill that’s weighing on my mind terribly and I’d love to pay it off .

We sell Emma's books for our town in our art gallery!

I bought a mindfulness colouring book from a girl on Instagram and she used some sort of pro drawing software on her iPad to create the most beautiful designs. I’m nowhere near that skilled and was hoping that Canva would help me.

I do special needs babysitting and pa-ing. I work in an sen school though and have decades of experience. On a good month I'll make about £300 extra