To ask what I need to know before I start a “side hustle”?

[IAmBroke]

I’m not in a great financial situation and it’s giving me a lot of anxiety, but I’m finally facing up to it to try and sort the problem out.

I want to start doing some “side hustle” tasks, mainly focussing on typing (I have a lot of typing experience so I figure I can put it to good use), using transcription websites. I’m aiming to make about £10-£15 a day, not much but over the course of a month it would be £300-£450.

I aim to split it as follows:

25% tax
20% saving
20% spending
35% debt repayments

I know if I go over £1,000 in a tax year I’ll need to register for self assessment tax and complete a tax return. Do I need to know anything else?

Most of it is interest free for the next 36 months.

I have a lot of typing experience. I did it for 10 years pretty much

Could you not just get a part time job? You’re factoring in a hour or 2 of work a day, but a couple hours work a day self employed is not a couple hours of income generation. You still need to do marketing and invoicing and handling comms with potential new clients (80% of whom will not book you for any paid work), dealing with corrections to jobs done, any complaints, chasing everyone who hasn’t paid. Don’t forget expenses like a new computer and advertising costs, which come off that £300 ish a month.

For all that hassle and time, you’d be better off just getting 1 shift a week in a cafe and keeping the rest of your free time instead of wasting it doing Facebook advertising or cold calling businesses to get work.

I looked at setting up a small business side hustle and was put off when I read that wealthy people invest and successful businesses are often launched by people who use other people's money to set up as a business (rather than using their own time and money for advertising, discounting to build a brand etc).

I thing trades are a bit different as you're self employed and selling your skills rather than building a business.

In your case I think you need

• a mission (why pay and use you, a total unknown stranger, instead of an established company?)
• can you compete for fair pay when a business probably already auto types and they may just have a human sense checking?
• insurance and confidentiality policies.

I wouldn't touch anyone that doesn't have some sort of insurance or confidentiality policy in place, nor would I use a stranger without a great online presence and client references from named businesses. I think that will be a hurdle.

So I'm another that thinks the cost and effort isn't worth it. Sorry.

It’s via transcription platforms. They provide the work. I’m not looking to set up a business (yet)

Better make sure you warm them up before your typing job then! 😂

Agree with everyone else though that you should put all extra income towards debt repayment - especially as its credit cards with presumably high interest rates.

I mention matched betting on here every now and then and usually get flamed for it, but it helped me pay off over £4k in credit debt in 9 months. If you have £100 (ideally more) you can spare to get started, you can sign up for a month free trial at one of the big two websites. Be strict and follow their guides to the letter and you can get close to £1000 profit in the month trial with no risk involved - do not get greedy and end up getting drawn into gambling.

I'm currently just over £9.5k in profit after 18 months - paid off my debt and taken my family on 2 holidays abroad. The returns slow down after the initial sign up period, but it's still easy to make £300-£400 a month for about 4-5 hours per week in the evenings and weekend mornings. Gambling winnings are tax free so no need for self assessment etc.

How does this work?

If it pays that little it's a waste of time as you'd earn more doing one or two short shifts a week in retail or hospitality which should be easy to come by at this time of year.

Also, I'm the last person to say 'AI has made this job obsolete', but isn't transcription something that has become more or less obsolete due to AI?

Paying money into savings when you have debt is madness. You will save more money by paying off the debt faster and reducing your interest payments.
Have a read of Martin Lewis guide to paying off debt. Pay off the highest interest debt first.

No. A lot of people, especially in the legal and medical field, cannot use AI yet as confidentiality etc is not guaranteed.

But do you have experience in legal or medical audio typing?

Legal, yes. I did it for ten years.

Probably only if your income from the side hustle is more than £20,000 and that's way in the future threshold is £50,000 for 2026 tax return, I think!

The debt is interest free for the next 3 years. Paying the minimums and saving extra will earn interest that can go towards the debt.

And AI makes a lot of mistakes.

Well of course AI is a poor solution to a lot of things but it doesn't seem to stop people advocating it.

But in any case, the OP is talking about earning only a very small fraction of NMW (£10-15 for 3-4 hours work a day) so it doesn’t seem worth it for that alone. As a minimum she should be earning £12.21 pH, more if self employed so no holiday pay.

I have a full time job. This is literally extra income. I’m not arsed about getting NMW. If I were to earn £20 a night (seems feasible), that’s £600 potentially a month. From home, after my job and after I’ve been to the gym, from the warmth and comfort of my own home.

not necessarily.

i have debt running at about 3% per year. Currently my savings are giving me 4.5% (cash) and 8% (isa).

so I’m earning more money in interest than I would save by paying off the debt.

explain why it’s “madness” paying money into savings rather than paying off the debt?

I don't want to get in trouble by mentioning site names (not sure if it's allowed or not), but if you google 'matched betting site' the top two results that come up offer pretty much the same service. It sounds complicated at first, but after about 2 days you realise how simple it is. They literally walk you through each step and have software that tells you what to do in real time and have great facebook groups for advice.

When you see adverts saying things like "Join this betting site and get £30 in free bets", it's a way of converting as much of that free bet into profit as possible. Usually you can expect to keep 80% of what they're offering in free bets. You then go to the next website and sign up there, the next one and so on. The first 3 weeks I was hitting £250 profit each week easily. Even if you only do the month free trial then stop it's still a decent amount of money.

You will end up with lots of transactions on your bank accounts for gambling websites, so not to be done if you're applying for mortgages etc (I stopped for 3 months so I had no transactions on my account when I submitted 3 months statements), but if you're paying off debt then I can't imagine that's an issue anyway. It doesn't directly affect your credit rating at all - mine went up as I had paid off all my short term debt!

Okay interesting!

I think I’ve given the wrong impression, I won’t be starting a business. Essentially just using websites to make some money.