Alan R. Simon - Side Hustles For Dummies

You can “package up” as many different side-hustle ideas as you have time for or that make sense for you. You aren’t even limited to ones that are closely related to one another, such as baseball and football cards, or hair and eyebrow microblading. Be careful not to spread yourself too thin, especially as you’re first getting started in the world of side hustles.

You’ve selected your side-hustle topical areas to focus on, and you’ve decided what sort of side hustle to do (providing a service, selling something, delivering content, or monetizing an asset). Guess what: Your decision-making still needs to march ahead! Now you need to decide how you’re going to take your side hustle to market and how you’re going to reach prospective customers.

You could

Go to market totally on your own.

Leverage an online marketplace.

Join a multilevel marketing (MLM) organization.

You can start, build, and run a side hustle that is structurally identical to a full-time business. Breanna went down this particular side-hustle road for her online boutique. She built a simple website and Shopify store and is doing her own social-media marketing. She lined up her suppliers and set aside a spare bedroom in her house to serve as a warehouse and shipping area. She processes customer orders as they come in and then packs and ships each outgoing package herself.

Breanna’s brother Brian is also in the side-hustle game, but he has taken a different route than his sister did. Brian is a software engineer who wants to do a little smaller-scale contract software development for his side hustle. So, whereas Breanna is selling physical products for her side hustle, Brian is providing a service for his.

But other than the product-versus-service and fashion-versus-tech differences, Brian’s side hustle is very similar to Breanna’s. He also built his own website and has been doing online targeted ads to drum up business. Basically, Brian’s side hustle mirrors that of his sister in terms of going to market as a microcosm of a larger business.

Rather than try to market and advertise your side hustle totally from scratch, you can get a head start by posting your services on an existing online marketplace that’s widely known and that your potential customers frequently visit to find providers for what you’re selling.

Keith is a software engineer at the same company where Brian works, and he also wants to start a software development side hustle. Keith, however, doesn’t have the patience to set up his own website or to do his own targeted marketing on social media to try to find business.

Instead, Keith lists his services on Fiverr, an online marketplace where people and businesses come to find contractors for software development, video editing and production, graphic design, market research, writing a business plan, or other professional services.

Many people like Keith use online marketplaces such as Fiverr, Upwork, Freelancer, Guru, and other sites as the foundation for their side hustles.

Online marketplaces aren’t limited to professional services side hustles, either:

If you do dog walking or pet sitting for your side hustle, you can list your services on Rover, Holidog, or Puppy Friends Social Club.

If you provide home-related services, you can go to market through Angi or Thumbtack.

If you do freelance hair styling or tutoring, or provide dance lessons, you can post your services on the aforementioned Fiverr under the “Lifestyle” category.

Suppose Sandy decides his sports collectible–related side hustle will be to help other people figure out how much their long-forgotten vintage card collections are worth. Sandy could list “Vintage Baseball Card Appraisal and Valuation” on Fiverr under “Lifestyle” services. In fact, if you happen to be a Pokémon collector, you’re in good company with other side hustlers who post that they’ll help you figure out how much your Pokémon collection is worth. Another side-hustle freelancer posts that they’ll appraise Peanuts (the comic strip with Snoopy, Charlie Brown, and their friends) collectibles. If you can imagine a product or service, odds are that you can come up with a related side hustle!

MLM organizations — also called network marketing companies — are the most controversial topic in the world of side hustles. Some people swear that MLMs are the absolute best way to do a side hustle, while others swear at MLMs and regret the day they ever signed up for one. So, what’s the story with MLMs?

Suppose you’re interested in selling exercise clothing, activewear, and leisurewear for a side hustle. You could do what Breanna did:

Build your own website or storefront.

Decide which specific products you want to sell.

Find suppliers for the products you want to sell.

Figure out the tricks of social-media advertising to reach potential customers.

Pack and ship orders if you’re handling your own inventory.

On the other hand, you could find an MLM that markets the type of activewear and leisurewear that you want to sell and then join that MLM.

You don’t just sign up with an MLM, however. The term multilevel is part of the name for a reason. You typically become part of the sales network for someone who is already a member of that company (thus, the significance of the work network in network marketing ). Further, as illustrated in Figure 2-2, that network is constructed in multiple tiers, or levels, thus, the name multilevel marketing.

If you join an MLM, you make money from selling products to other people. But you also make money by bringing other people into the company and typically by receiving a small portion of the sales made by each person in your network. Basically, the larger your network, the more money you can make from products that other people sell.

FIGURE 2-2:A typical MLM hierarchical structure.

The pyramid-like structure of the typical sales force within a multilevel marketing company is why many people view MLMs as a “pyramid scheme.” The full story is somewhat murkier. If an MLM company has a viable product that its independent contractor sales associates — basically, a whole bunch of people doing side hustles — offers and sells to the public, then despite the pyramid-like structure the MLM likely isn’t a pyramid scheme in the classic financial fraud sense. But the key is that the company does need to have real products or services that you and others actually sell.

You need to do your homework and determine