To ask what your "side hustles" are and if there really worth the extra headache/stress?

[Puddinandpie]

So Im a crafter/sewist and can make really pretty things and i have have been thinking about this for some time but not sure a)where to start and b) if having a side hustle is worth the extra hours, money invested and of course stress to make it work, how long does it take to get going, make a profit, please tell me your side hustles and if in the long run it was worth all the headache?
I hope any of that makes sense sorry had covid really recently and today I feel not with it everything is a bit foggy so my writing skills have gone out the window unfortunately!!

Has anyone tried Matched Betting? I’ve heard it’s a lot harder to make decent money now.

I have been running a skincare focused Instagram for a few years now and the past six months I've been receiving lots of pr products. So my skincare hobby basically pays for itself. I've earned about a tenner a month through it so not a lot but who knows where it'll lead.

@Choopi

I have a website that has adsense on it. It makes a few hundred euros a month. I literally haven't looked at it in about 2 years. It was an effort to set it up when I first did about 5 years ago though.

That's interesting. Could you give a very rough idea of the type of website it is?

I'm a teacher and work at a holiday club during the holidays. I can work as many days as I want and it's stress-free because I'm not in charge. I get paid £140 per day. My colleagues think I'm mad but I enjoy it.

Wow Im running a holiday club for less than that 😳. I need to find other avenues of employment!

I write website content for companies and make around £1000 extra a month.

But - I have a niche. And it can be very boring, it's like writing PR copy. I would not want to do it full time, I like my proper job too much.

Dog sitting/home boarding. Look at licencing and insurance rules for your area - however for where I live, its £25 per dog for a day time home dog sitting (you drop the dog on your way to work, pick up on way home), £40-60 overnight care in the sitters home, £90-100 a night to have someone move into the dog owners house to look after their pet. If you are looking after a dog in your own home, its perfectly possible to have 2 or 3 dogs a day.

For dog sitting in your home, you can do other home working at the same time, but would need to be able to factor in time for dog walks.

'Side hustles'?
I thought they were called 'Bat Wings'?

Hi @Sloth66,

YES! I did it when I was on Mat leave about 5 years ago and made about £2k over 4 months or so, 30 mins a day. Search Matched Betting with Team Profit to get you started. Just started mat leave again so going to get back on it.

If you want to make a profit from crafting/sewing I think you need to START by looking at what price you would be able to charge for items then work out whether that would cover your costs, including payment for your time.

I know loads of people who have tried a craft/baking business but either a) tried to charge whatever is needed to cover their costs and time then been surprised when people don't want to pay it or b) not given any thought to costs/pricing and ended up making a huge loss.

Sadly, most of the people I knew that tried this found out very quickly that although they might have used the best materials/ingredients and spent hours hand crafting/decorating, there is a limit to what people will spend on a pretty cushion/cake etc.

If you want to do it then do a business plan first.

It's not worth it. Everyone does tenner Tuesday and fiver friday and it's a race to the bottom. The worst are people selling to cover craft costs instead of operating as a business as customers then wonder why you are charging twice the price

I have noticed a few younger women who have come to live in my village of late, are always advertising their home made bits and pieces. Lots make candles and melts whatever they are, but the market seems saturated with them now... One woman makes colourful and sparkly dangly things, to hang on shrubs and small trees in the garden, for when you are having friends round for BBQ's.that she says, enhances the joy and merriment of a BBQ gathering.. but she seems to have gone off the radar now after a few weeks.. all these things seem to be short lived things. Another woman said she was starting a business, making little girly tents, that go in the bedrooms, all adorned with sparkly hanging things, and stars and all sorts, and she was making pretty throws and cushions, to go in the bedroom tents. probably all pink things.!

She probably got the idea from that film, The Holiday. with Jude Law, and Cameron Diaz !!

I think that if you are very adept at making specialised things, that are classy and are stand alone items, they would sell well if advertised. but not candles !!

I buy a lot of lovely creative items from Etsy (prints, jewellery, personalised gift cards and candles for milestone birthdays etc) and am always delighted with the quality and obvious effort that sellers go to. But I often wonder how much money they are actually making once they have covered their production costs, marketing, postage and so on. I suspect not a lot, in all honesty.

My DF is a keen and genuinely talented woodturner - the items he makes are truly beautiful and he makes things for the occasional local craft exhibition or craft fair, but really he just does it because he loves it. Often family or friends will ask him to make something specific for them, which he happily does as a one-off. But when asked why he doesn't just set up a small business and do it professionally his answer has always been that as soon as you 'have' to make something the joy goes out of it and it becomes stressful. And that's without trying to market yourself/do your admin/cover your costs/get stuff posted and so on. It is and has always been a lovely hobby for him but no more. I think he's probably very wise.

I had a side hustle in the craft industry and it became my full time job after a while. I make roughly the same that I did in my old job but with way less constant stress.

You have to do All The Things to build and run a small business on the side. You will need to devote time to photography, possibly video, copy writing, social media, customer emails, business planning, accounting, and taxes on top of your actual making of stuff. So it takes more time per product than making the same things as gifts for friends, etc.

Teaching is more profitable because everything is about scale. Sell an item, you use the set time to make that item. Teach a room of people to make that item and you can charge per person who fits in the room. Teach online and you can charge per person with basically no upper limit. I mostly teach online and now only sell physical product in the Christmas season when I know I can always sell out and just have that as my Christmas bonus basically.

If you consider teaching, do remember that being good at making something doesn’t automatically make someone a good teacher. Practice with friends before you have a paying audience. The timing will not be the same in a group and it takes learning. You either need to be very comfortable with impromptu speaking or develop a loose script so you keep the crowd engaged ans directed.

Best of luck!!!

Yes.

I grow my savings via matched betting and lay arbitrage, which is not exactly passive income, but has annual growth/yield of around 12% a year growth/£300 month addition according to the amount of effort I put in.

I make decorations on commission for friends and family, and baking items/chocolates. Not a return per hour, but I enjoy it A LOT. A micro return on a hobby if be doing anyway is well worth it.

And I'm launching my first book later in the year. I've been working on my book series for free for six years, and will wrote for the rest of my life for free.

Side hustles to me are about getting money from what you love, working a second job.

Inspired by this thread i thought, ok, if I'm not ready to throw in the towel, I'll have a go at a new Facebook ad. It brings home to me that I don't know what I'm doing. Wrestling with the meta pixels not being integrated in my shopify site and I'm seriously questioning my life choices! Arghhh! If only it was as easy as making the stuff!

Of course there are other ways to sell - Etsy and the like - but there's a big furore at the moment as Etsy have hiked up their fees and are taking absolutely huge percentages from the sellers and there's a lot of competition from resellers who buy cheap components like pendants from AliExpress for about 1p, hang it on a chain and call it handmade.

@Choopi

I have a website that has adsense on it. It makes a few hundred euros a month. I literally haven't looked at it in about 2 years. It was an effort to set it up when I first did about 5 years ago though.

I would love to hear more about this

I teach swimming

I like that for a few hours additional a week I get a free gym/swim membership which saves our household budget needing to get a gym membership, plus I earn a few ££ a month which I can use.

And I genuinely enjoy it.

(there's a national shortage of swim teachers so if you don't hate water you'll be snapped up for work - and companies often pay the qualifications) .

[quote Puddinandpie]@TheShoeLady yes that's what I'm worried about! People honestly don't know just how much effort goes into making items and i suppose i worry will people think I'm overcharging etc because I know what goes into making the items but they don't! I do love doing it, but worry others won't appreciate the time, effort and not to mention money that goes into my craft items! It really is a shame that all the other things that go into getting the items out there for people to see and purchase is just so boring and mundane and as you said clearly takes so much effort, that in the end it all feels a bit pointless!
Life I so much harder now!

Is there any other side lines that take much less effort and thought, but still keep your head above drowning in these very uncertain times?[/quote]
What you could do it not make things to order, but simply sell what you made as part of your hobby to make some extra money on the side. If someone does approach you for a custom project you could give them a quote, but not sweat it if they aren't prepared to pay it.

This way you can still enjoy your hobby without much of the added pressures and it actually would be a side hustle rather then something you are trying to live of.

I think you really need to know with digital marketing what you are doing. I use it a lot but we have a ready made repeat buying customer base. I see so many sponsored posts on my page that they clearly just haven’t targeted and I’m getting it because they are targeting ‘friends and friends if friends’ — now this might work if you are marketing your ‘children’s entertainer’ business or your cheap pub lunches but it wont work if you are selling something that’s very ‘niche’ . Same goes with territories, what’s the point of marketing me your cheap pub lunches when I’m in say Essex (I’m not) and your pub is in Huddersfield— simply because you have targeted friends and friends of friends and ignored your territory section.

@red30505

I teach swimming

I like that for a few hours additional a week I get a free gym/swim membership which saves our household budget needing to get a gym membership, plus I earn a few ££ a month which I can use.

And I genuinely enjoy it.

(there's a national shortage of swim teachers so if you don't hate water you'll be snapped up for work - and companies often pay the qualifications) .

Really interested in this. I used to be a really good swimmer back in the day, and I've taught a few children to swim when a teenager and most recently my own daughter.

You need your usually modest spend to count, so are wasting adverts on people’s social media who in reality are not going to be remotely interested— drill it down!!! Now on the other hand if you have a very generic product that sells online and yet not that many ‘friends’ on your page - that’s when you go into categories rather than friends and ‘choose’ something similar to target to. So say I want to target my new range of false eyelashes (totally fictitious as I’m not into them) I would target - females 18 to 45 , choose United Kingdom as a territory (Brexit has buggered mail order overseas sales unless you have a distributor in various territories) and then in categories put ‘beauty’ — and do a £60 ad over 15 days. Sorry if I’m teaching some of you to suck eggs , but I’ve seen so many clearly bloody clueless sponsored posts

I have a summer hustle where I do freelance artist liaison at festivals. Been doing it for 8 years now, it sounds glamorous but it’s physically exhausting and not hugely well paid. Fun, though.

@Choopi

I have a website that has adsense on it. It makes a few hundred euros a month. I literally haven't looked at it in about 2 years. It was an effort to set it up when I first did about 5 years ago though.

Can I ask what the website is? Just interested as you say you haven't looked at it for two years so it must be fairly low maintenance. I've been looking to do something similar. Thanks!

@Hunderland out of interest, how do you find content writing work? I work in print publishing but really want to try and do some freelance writing for websites but wouldn't have a clue where to start finding the work.