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!!

Not a side hustle for me but I buy a lot of handmade baby clothes. Would that be an option for you?

My husband recently created a cookbook and made over £12k in profit. We are currently developing a new card game (not giving away any details!) and will be selling that online. We also have a small Etsy shop which turns over around £9k a year in profit, mainly doing digital downloads. This is on top of two full time jobs. We’re really excited about the new card game though. It’s at the testing phase now and we’ve had a lot of feedback from friends and family so it’s actually changed quite a bit from the initial idea. In the past we’ve been SMS psychic text operators in our spare time to raise extra money for our wedding.

@EveningOverRooftops

This is what I find so frustrating. People will spend £4-500 on a piece of art to hang on the wall and the artist might make minimum wage off that, maybe more with prints but if you put the same hours into a dress or cake or anything else there’s a massive blind spot about hours, skill and value.

I’m a knitter and artist/designer. I’ve no trouble selling art for £300 that I’ve spent a day on but no one will spend that on a wool jumper I’ve spent the more time and materials cost on and will last a lifetime of cared for well. Unless it’s from a branded shop. I despair sometimes and mates rates don’t pay the bills!

I think the problem here is the recent trend towards things being poorly made, which is a direct correlation of the move towards ever cheaper everything. I would happily pay a good price for well made clothes that last, and have a few times, but I've also been burnt by paying a lot for clothes that don't last, and am now wary, particularly from a brand or person I don't know. I hope the ethical shift towards buying less will help here, but I fear it will be an uphill battle to get the consumer in general back on side. None of this helps you, I realise, but I do hope it'll change in time.

@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.

What is adsense?

exam invigilating, I've signed up at two local senior schools, I am retired so can do more hours pays £12 ish per hour, my schoosl pay minimum 3 hours. Also contact electoral registrations in your borough (and any close ones) lots of work around the annual electoral registration forms in Aug/Sept every year and then a flurry when there are elections, polling clerk, counting the votes, opening postal votes.

I do surveys while I'm watching telly and make around 20 pounds a week. Pays for pocket money and the odd starbucks, but keeps it out of the household bill. You can use this link and you get 40p to start you off.

I'm inviting you to join AttaPoll. Get paid to take surveys. Download the app here: attapoll.app/join/skawm

Also make sure that you buy everything you can online through a cashback site including renewing your car and house insurance, switching utilities etc. I make around 600 a year and keep it all for Xmas. You can take it out as a voucher and that gives you an extra 10 or 20 per cent, so another 60 to 120 pounds. Eg a Nike voucher for tracksuits.

You can use this link and you will get a 5 pounds bonus when you clear 5 pounds of cashback.

app.quidco.com/raf/1qnW

The final thing is Airtime Rewards. You just register your bank card with the app and every time you use a retailer they have you get cashback, so for example Boots. They have supermarkets on there and I do my weekly shop, say at tesco anyway and got cashback. You can only use the cashback off your mobile phone bill, but my bill has only been around ten pounds for the last 4 months since using well worth it.
You can add this code when you download the app and you get £1 cashback added.

KAVJXMCJ

Love the thread. I'm also trying to start sell on ebay and car boots target 80 pounds a month.

@ExplodingElephants
In the past we’ve been SMS psychic text operators ...

I knew you were going to say that

@Higgeldypiggeldy35

Those doing surveys do you have to declare that income ? I'm interested in doing that but I couldn't be bothered with the paperwork for only £50 a month

Once you reach £1000 I believe you do.

I make a living from handmade crafting and the key to success is ALL about presentation. An engaging and beautiful social media presence will attract followers, thus sales. I know many talented crafters/artists whose amazing work is poorly presented and they also don’t communicate in an interesting way on social media so just don’t get sales.

Only half my time is spent actually ‘making’, the rest is planning social media posts, taking great photographs of my work, thinking up original designs etc.

Pricing is important too, I have a rough formula that means I won’t sell anything that hasn’t earned me at least minimum wage for my labour - if I earned less than this I reckon my resentment would start to affect my creativity IYKWIM

Wisterical social media is the key for sure. im really curious about your business and what you do now! Social media is so difficult to know what to post that will be engaging. Sometimes i post a well thought out, carefully designed post and it'll get nothing and yet a quick photo taken of nothing in particular gets loads of engagement - then the next day it'll be the other way round!

I work 30 hours a week in my proper job but around once a month I do some online candidate assessment for a large Public Sector organisation. It’s not guaranteed work but i have done it around 10 out of the last 12 months. It takes around 15 hours just as and when I can do it over a 4 day period and it earns me £600 extra per month
I actually really enjoy it

@R2G

I do surveys while I'm watching telly and make around 20 pounds a week. Pays for pocket money and the odd starbucks, but keeps it out of the household bill. You can use this link and you get 40p to start you off.

I'm inviting you to join AttaPoll. Get paid to take surveys. Download the app here: attapoll.app/join/skawm

Also make sure that you buy everything you can online through a cashback site including renewing your car and house insurance, switching utilities etc. I make around 600 a year and keep it all for Xmas. You can take it out as a voucher and that gives you an extra 10 or 20 per cent, so another 60 to 120 pounds. Eg a Nike voucher for tracksuits.

You can use this link and you will get a 5 pounds bonus when you clear 5 pounds of cashback.

app.quidco.com/raf/1qnW

The final thing is Airtime Rewards. You just register your bank card with the app and every time you use a retailer they have you get cashback, so for example Boots. They have supermarkets on there and I do my weekly shop, say at tesco anyway and got cashback. You can only use the cashback off your mobile phone bill, but my bill has only been around ten pounds for the last 4 months since using well worth it.
You can add this code when you download the app and you get £1 cashback added.

KAVJXMCJ

Love the thread. I'm also trying to start sell on ebay and car boots target 80 pounds a month.

I love Attapoll. Currently got £5.96 to go into PayPal but that will increase by the end of the month.

I provide specialist technical advice to large organisations as my side hustle. It's fun, pays better than my paid job and I can pick and choose which organisations I work with. I keep my paid job as although the pay is a lot less than the hustle I really enjoy working there - the work is fun, keeps me fit and my colleagues are lovely and great fun.

@Twinkletwinklelittletoes I make little characters from recycled fabrics and tbh I’m astonished by how well it’s taken off! Before I started I spent a few weeks scrolling to notice what it was about other people’s posts that made me pause and engage with them. It was always firstly the image, then an authentic/original voice. I post sporadically, never more than once a week, because I realised that I unfollow people who post every day. I’ve built up a friendly ‘community’ of followers and am really respectful to them and grateful for their engagement and sharing of my posts.

Finding other appropriate groups to share your work in can be really helpful too. Basically I think you have to give something back on social media, follow other people, always reply to comments and put loads of effort into having a high quality page (or whatever) yourself. What do you make?

@EveningOverRooftops

This is what I find so frustrating. People will spend £4-500 on a piece of art to hang on the wall and the artist might make minimum wage off that, maybe more with prints but if you put the same hours into a dress or cake or anything else there’s a massive blind spot about hours, skill and value.

I’m a knitter and artist/designer. I’ve no trouble selling art for £300 that I’ve spent a day on but no one will spend that on a wool jumper I’ve spent the more time and materials cost on and will last a lifetime of cared for well. Unless it’s from a branded shop. I despair sometimes and mates rates don’t pay the bills!

Because the cake and dresses have cheaper alternatives.

A specific piece of art doesn’t?

This sounds really interesting work and right up my street!…how do companies/organisations recruit for this type of thing? Where should I be looking?

@Hoppinggreen

I work 30 hours a week in my proper job but around once a month I do some online candidate assessment for a large Public Sector organisation. It’s not guaranteed work but i have done it around 10 out of the last 12 months. It takes around 15 hours just as and when I can do it over a 4 day period and it earns me £600 extra per month I actually really enjoy it

Sorry my message above was in response to @Hoppinggreen 🙈

I saw an advert a couple of years ago, applied, passed the checks and then started to be sent work. It was going to be F2F but once Covid hit it all went online. It’s great though because if it was F2F I couldn’t do it around my proper job
I can’t remember where I saw the advert though and I know they aren’t taking on any more people for now
Sorry

@LadyFlumpalot - can I ask if your etsy shop is for silver clay items with a range of pieces from nature? If so I love your work and have been eyeing up a pair of earrings for a while now......

I used to have a silver finger/handprint type jewellery side hustle but it was full of "hobby" people making no money and doing a bad job and flouting hallmark legislation.

Am just about to launch a new business that I am really excited about as it's far more scalable and has real potential

My main job is a nurse and my side hustle is eBay . I only sell our out grown stuff but usually do ok

I’ve got a few - I focus a lot on passive income because life is busy.

I make YouTube videos - lots of those ‘Christmas scenes and music’ background videos. YouTube have clamped down on monetising them now so you can’t start this now but it makes £1,000 ish per month.

I have a website earning anything from $500-$1,000 per month from adverts and I work on it for 3 hours a week.

I sell courses and digital products like planners, budgeting books and that sort of thing. Around £200 per month passively, more if I put more time into advertising.

My "side hustle" is a full time job.
I craft- revenue is just shy of VAT threshold ( deliberate- I could sell more) , profit margin very healthy.

I used to be a matched bettor, I used Team Profit and OddsMonkey and made about £20k over 3 years though some of that was from doing high risk casino offers.

I ended up stopping as it was becoming more and more time consuming and I was losing accounts to stake restrictions - bookies don’t like you taking value! When I started there were loads of old hands saying how it was harder to make a good profit these days and my understanding is it’s even worse now. There also concern around the current gambling review which includes recommendations to limit maximum loses for gamblers which would, in effect, wipe out matched betting.

music theory and piano lessons, but I do struggle for the time.