To ask for your best side hustles?

[Sidehustelesplea]

I’m 21 and working 40 hours per week in hospitality. As you can imagine this isn’t exactly bringing in mega money. I live in a flat-share and the bank of mum and dad is shut. Overall I’m just about covering my expenses but I want to make a bit of extra money on the side. So Aibu to ask for your side hustles, second job ideas, ways of making money online etc?

I do petsitting through CatInAFlat - I have experience of having cats and occasionally having done it for friends, and it helps if you're someone who likes animals but can't have your own, as it's like having a bonus pet for a few days. It's not regular work but I have a couple of people who book me when they go away and I use that money to pay for fun things or just stick it in my savings. There isn't an equivalent for dogsitting that I know of, near me people tend to use trained/professional dogwalkers and it seems to be harder to do on an ad-hoc basis around a full-time job.

Buying and selling online isn't as easy as it used to be a few years ago in terms of making extra cash - I think the quick availability of things on Amazon and the lower cost of things like Shein have devalued second-hand things a lot, and people have less money to spend on more expensive things. I would be wary of flipping (buying stuff specifically to sell) unless you know of a good niche - I have a couple of hobbies which have led to me being good at spotting stuff in charity shops or FB marketplace that sell well online, and also where to sell them (hobby forums/FB groups are good, Depop can work well if it's something very Gen Z friendly). If you have stuff yourself you could stand to get rid of, Vinted is good, or also selling on FB groups - I am a member of a few for specific brands/styles and have found that the least hassle.

OH GOD do not touch MLMs, by the way. It's only profitable if you start your own.

Also taking in animals, that's sure to go down well with your HMO flatmates and not get you evicted.

@TheTravelRobin are you talking about signing up to Inteletravel, which is the ‘travel agent’ front of a pyramid scheme called PlanNet Marketing? You are using distinctly MLM pyramid scheme language “sells itself” for example. If so you shouldn’t be trying to recruit here. It must be the only travel agent that made more money when there was a pandemic travel ban than when we were all free to travel. That’s because it makes its money from recruiting people to be “travel agents” not from selling travel and there were a lot of people tricked into schemes during the pandemic. ABTA was basically bribed to let Inteletravel snuggle up to them. It needs closing down.

I’ve reported that post

If nothing else, it doesn't seem like a guaranteed income at a time when people are cutting their discretionary spending across the board and/or are capable of going online and using comparison sites themselves.

Totally pointless comment

Why bother saying anything?!

Babysitting? Could advertise on local facebook pages or join an agency. Most people will want you to have a dbs and first aid as a minimum. There also exam invigilators

How do you get a following? How does the marketing work?

We have foreign students staying with us one week a month, that’s really good and we learn a lot from them too. Around £250 a week, depending on the number.

I have a fledgling business helping people declutter and organise their space. It branches slightly in to interior design/space arrangement. It’s a lot of fun although not that lucrative yet. Minimal set up costs and about £3k so far.

We Vinted masses of stuff and treat it like a business; only posting on certain days etc. It varies a lot but around £150 a month.

"girlfriend44 · 26/06/2023 19:12

I've got one, but I don't want to to share sorry. Good luck and you need to work hard at it."

You're an escort and masseur but you only do the really good looking guys and then charge double.

My most lucrative ever (and current) side hustle is playing online casino slots but in a way that mathematically gives you the edge not the casinos. There’s sites that find the deals which offer this advantage and talk you through step by step what to do. The one I use costs about £20 a month but they all offer free trials. It isn’t risk free obviously but you start with low risk offers until you’ve built up your bank roll. Some people combine it with matched betting but i can’t be bothered to learn how. I’ve been doing it a year and most months make more than I do in my (admittedly low paid and part time) job. Plus it’s all tax free.

I’m the opposite - a matched better but haven’t been bothered to learn how to do the casino. Tempted now! Did you use outplayed?

I use one of their competitors, I’m not really sure on their rules about sharing are but oh well, it’s Team Casino. Definitely worth giving a go, some of the welcome offers won’t be available to you as you’ll have used them from MB but there’ll be plenty you can still take advantage of. I’m pretty sure they offer a 10 day trial for just £1

Thank you! I’ve already used my outplayed free trial so this works out well.

Do you earn much from matched betting?

Look into becoming a Hospitality Apprenticeship assessor. Companies like Lifetime pay about £25k for far more sociable hours and decent career progression.

I think the first time I did it I made £600. I ran out of steam and freebets so stopped for a few years. Started again recently and made £200 over a couple of weeks. I’d already used the signup offers on lots of bookies previously so my offers were limited. I can’t be bothered with the £1.50 profit and ‘potential profit’ ones but that’s just me. I’ve heard it isn’t as lucrative as it used to be.

If you haven’t done it before and you have £100 to play with then you could make a good few hundred quite quickly I’d have thought. I would recommend starting out on TeamProfit and once you’ve got the hang of it, move on to the outplayed free trial.

This is a really complex question and would take hours to answer. I would say to anyone looking to do this, join a facebook group like 20 books to 50k. Also, read Dave Chesson's website Kindlepreneur. If you look through with his back articles, it will give you a solid grounding.

When I started doing this, I realised what you need is well written, well edited books with killer covers that tell the reader exactly what the genre is.

My best seller so far has been a book called A tale of Two Christmases, if you want to see what I'm talking about regarding genre. It literally flew off the shelves at Christmas.

You either have to pay for marketing in time or in money. There's no two ways about that. You can spend hours and hours building up social media pages, making Tiktok videos, etc. Or you can pay to run adverts. I use Amazon and Facebook for ads. You won't gain visibility and a following without one or the other. At least, 99% of people won't.

It's not a get rich quick scheme. But then again, neither is traditional publishing for most authors. Best of luck!

Thank you so much!

I don’t have a ‘side huddle’ as such but wanted to say - perhaps look to moving careers. I work in the NHS - a lot of our non-registered staff are able to pick up overtime and/or agency whenever they want to - at not unreasonable rates of pay.

There is also opportunity for career progression. If you wanted to keep your hand in with hospitality, you could pick up bar shifts etc

You are much kinder in your thinking than I was. I came up with a whole list, but forgot drug running. LOL!

We should have a contest to see who can come up with the most outrageous possibilities. 😉

Can I play too? I'd suggest paid reviewer of takeaway restaurants, a one woman mission to destroy the reputation of outlets far and wide... Apologies cheeky reference to her other posts and threads

I have a few side hussles, I make my own costume jewellery which sells really well on Vinted as well as being self published on Kindle. What I will say though is make sure your have your tax sorted or it could end up costing more than you make. There is a startup amount which is exempt but after that it can add up. Hope that helps