Millennial Side Hustle

So some of the zips that work on my team continue to toss this buzz word around as if Peter Drucker coined it himself in his most recent HBS Case Study.

What is the deal with this 'gig economy' I keep hearing about? Am I the only one who wants to sleep and have fun while I'm away from work?

However, I am interested in hearing about real hustles (ie not flipping burgers or driving Uber) that bring a bounty on side.

Money4NuffinChecks4Free

 
Controversial

Before anyone MS's me, I am not condoning academic fraud, see the end of my post

Granted I don't do this often anymore since graduating, but I had a writing tutoring practice since high school, as I was competing in regional writing competitions...

They started coming to me instead of paying random people to do their essays. Anything from topics "Explain the economic history of Ireland in the 1800s" to "What are examples of white appropriation in the music industry" (Im not kidding, I wrote that one drunk off my ass, laughing when the kid told me he got an A and he paid me $180 for 2 hours of my time)

International students cheat like dogs. Persians and Indians had 200+ group chats where they spread my name. Arabs and Chinese were especially willing to pay. They were going to cheat anyway,( like everyone else) How I charged them

  • $20-80 a page, higher rates for more pages, but there were instances where my time was stretched and I could charge over $100 a page if there was research I would have to do

  • A 4 page paper, probably 1-2 hours of work if I know the subject/can BS the topic, would net me $200 or more.

  • Once they trust you, you push them for disclosing the rest of their essays for the semesters and make them depend on you

  • If they abuse/dont respect your time, tell them to fuck off, and they instantly double their pay or risk failing/getting kicked out/Visas revoked.

2 Rules

1. Don't help people who are in your major, who may end up in your industry, or are your competition

2. If you are an alumni/fellow student in the same school (eg, the business school), rat them and kick them out. You don't need to besmirch the education/reputation you actually worked for because some entitled shit thinks he/she can delegate through bribery.

 

if you have a U4, always disclose or you could lose your licenses. it goes under the outside business interests thing.

I'm of the opinion that side hustle means you aren't fully committed to your current job and that you could increase your income if you just worked harder & more effectively. if this is the case, I advise the following:

  1. find a new job

  2. work harder at your current job to generate side hustle income

I'm all about passive income like buying a franchise, owning rental properties, funding small businesses that pay dividends, but if you're actively working a second job, I'd just suggest all of the energy expended in that could be used to optimize your main gig. if you have a crap job and a side hustle, you have 2 crap jobs. put all of that energy in getting a great career, and your life will meaningfully improve

/rant

 

The critical question you have to ask yourself is,"Do I want to build the skills necessary to be a good employee?"

The ever-entertaining serial entrepreneur Scott Galloway realized early that his answer was "No!" From one of his posts, which is worth reading. http://bit.ly/2JYatem

"The skills and attributes necessary to be an entrepreneur are celebrated in the media every day — vision, risk taking, grit. But few mention the skills needed to be a good employee. I possess almost none of them. People assume, because I'm an entrepreneur, I have extraordinary talents too big for a company. The truth, about 90+% of entrepreneurs, is we start companies, not because we're so skilled, but because we don't have the skills to be an effective employee. On a risk-adjusted basis, being an employee for a good/great firm is more rewarding than being an entrepreneur. Again, something not discussed in a media obsessed with "innovators."

If you decide that your future lies not within a large hierarchical organization, a side-hustle can help you explore an alternative path before taking the plunge into entrepreneurship.

Not for the faint of heart, but it may be the right path for you.

 

While I agree that you shouldn't build yourself another job unless you actually enjoy doing it, I think you're missing a few of the main benefits of side hustles:

1) Diversify your income. Everyone in finance understands the power of diversification. If you have 70% of your income coming from your career but 30% from a side hustle, then you have a safety net if you get laid off.

You can work 80 hours a week gunning for that promotion but what if, for instance, your firm has massive exposure to mortgage backed securities and the housing market collapses (things out of your control) and you're out of a job? That 30% becomes 100% of your income and it'll keep the lights on.

2) Not all jobs have a linear relationship between time put in and money earned. I totally understand going all in if you're in a sales / eat what you kill role where the harder you grind, more you prospect, etc the more you earn.

But, what if you're in a corporate role where you meet the deliverable then office politics dictates who gets the promotion? Do you spend more time shmoozing or do you do enough to not get fired then try to increase your side income to the point where it makes as much as the increase from being promoted?

You can spend your time trying to find a job that pays better or where incentives are more aligned, however if it's in a similar field it'll probably have similar cons.

3) Test an idea within the safety of your own job. Keep earning a salary but test an idea to see if there's a market. Massively derisks entrepreneurship at the early stage.

4) Test if you even like entrepreneurship. Keep your job and see if you like earning money on the side. If you have a hard time balancing both, you'll probably have a tough time grinding it out as a full time entrepreneur.

5) Actually learn about business. This applies to more of the analysts and associates that did well in school and have only worked in financial services or consulting. You learn great skills and get exposure to high level strategic decision making. Awesome stuff... it's why people do this. But if you're actually running a small business - selling and marketing, handling customer service, dealing with suppliers etc you get a much more tangible grasp of what business is at the most basic level. When I started cold calling SMBs and pitching them my product the lightbulb went off that this is what business really is. Obviously, it made me a better operator but surprisingly also a better investor.

 

Do you really not understand the concept of the gig economy? Globalized world. Internet. Lot of people good at lots of shit. Sharing is caring. Work from an RV in Utah. Gig economy.

heister: Look at all these wannabe richies hating on an expensive salad. https://arthuxtable.com/
 

if you are techy and know a little about writing code, you could get into "Local SEO". Its actually not that hard to rank for certain search terms after you know how the system works (eg...optimize the on-page stuff....then build a network of websites for backlinks with expired domains, create a bunch of short youtube videos with links in the description, create the social accounts and build backlinks, and buy a press release service to create a blast of news articles with embedded links)...and startup costs are pretty reasonable on a per site basis if you amortize the costs among enough client projects. There is however a learning curve, and most people don't have the patience to learn the details of how these things work.

most people who will read this have probably already said "i can't do that" and that is exactly why it works.

just google it...you're welcome
 
want2trade:
if you are techy and know a little about writing code, you could get into "Local SEO". Its actually not that hard to rank for certain search terms after you know how the system works (eg...optimize the on-page stuff....then build a network of websites for backlinks with expired domains, create a bunch of short youtube videos with links in the description, create the social accounts and build backlinks, and buy a press release service to create a blast of news articles with embedded links)...and startup costs are pretty reasonable on a per site basis if you amortize the costs among enough client projects. There is however a learning curve, and most people don't have the patience to learn the details of how these things work.

most people who will read this have probably already said "i can't do that" and that is exactly why it works.

I'm totally too dumb to do any of this.

 

Tutor rich kids in SAT/ACT, or basic High School subjects. I make $150/hr and do roughly 8 hrs a week after work and on the weekend. You need to have the right schools (nationally known High School, Ivy or equivalent university) and be able to retake the SAT/ACT and get almost a perfect score. I currently go through a tutoring company which finds all the clients, writes custom curricula (curriculums? idk I don't tutor latin) and handles all the admin work for me (basically a pimp). I could probably get $250/hr if I went on my own, but that's a huge hassle and the company gives me credibility.

Anyway, it's a nice extra few thousand a month.

Array
 
jhd311:
Tutor rich kids in SAT/ACT, or basic High School subjects. I make $150/hr and do roughly 8 hrs a week after work and on the weekend. You need to have the right schools (nationally known High School, Ivy or equivalent university) and be able to retake the SAT/ACT and get almost a perfect score. I currently go through a tutoring company which finds all the clients, writes custom curricula (curriculums? idk I don't tutor latin) and handles all the admin work for me (basically a pimp). I could probably get $250/hr if I went on my own, but that's a huge hassle and the company gives me credibility.

Anyway, it's a nice extra few thousand a month.

No one would dare trust me to tutor their kid after seeing my exam scores earned and schools attended...

 

If you're in NYC and have a day free and want a little extra cash, you could sign up to do background work in a lot of the films/shows they are shooting around the city. I say a 'little' extra cash as I think the pay for non SAG actors is damn near minimum wage. But, it is an experience. I signed up as it looked fun / a chance to meet people.

I did it for one day in Brooklyn years ago for this MTV show directed by Doug Liman (Bourne Identity, Mr. & Mrs. Smith). It was a good experience, but it started getting old at about 5-6pm after we had been there all day shooting the same scene 30 times. Doug was so meticulous about everything. Meanwhile, they would play the same David Guetta song over and over again and we would have to fake dance to it.

There were a lot of hot chicks and free food all day. I was crushing the buffet every break. The skinny chicks hardly touched it. Most of the people were cool, except the lead actors, who had their own areas and were a bit distant from everyone except the director.

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 
latempo:
lmfao where can I find more info on this?

I saw it on craigslist. NYC craigslist is crazy. lol.

I think it was under this section:

https://newyork.craigslist.org/search/tlg?query=background&is_paid=all

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

Aside from the Amazon bullshit and the plagiarism recommendations above you can get into media creation. I know some people are into the whole youtube scene (It's quite understandable, any prospective analyst would want the opportunity to get a glimpse into the day of a consultant / doctor / trader / banker / etc). If you want something more professional and you are a great coder / modeler / great at case studies etc you can go to sites like Udemy and create tutorials / lessons and sell them (most well made lessons on there are under $20 with thousands to tens of thousands of copies sold).

 

True, on one hand you could spend hundreds of hours and sell 50 copies... on the other I recently bought a course on finance applications for python for like 12.99 and noticed it had almost 100k confirmed reviews.. few hundred hours of work for a cool million and change not bad. To each his own I suppose... If you enjoy teaching and practicing XYZ skill its a good option.

 

My big question about this one is how much time do you really have to dedicate to creating high quality content while still maintaining a regular upload schedule? It seems really difficult but hey, if you can do it and it's fun for you, more power to you.

Made ya look
 

Not sure if this would work for guys too, but babysitting yields nice extra cash. I use a babysitting app and on nights I know I'm not going out, will say I'm available and people book me straight from there. 9/10 times the kids are asleep the whole time. So I get paid $20-30/hr to watch Netflix, which I would have been doing anyways. Oh and in a way nicer apartment than my own.

 

Getting back to the original question...what about "social media marketing" (running the social media accounts for small businesses....twitter, facebook page, insta, yelp, foursquare, google reviews, etc...)

I keep seeing this course being sold by Tai Lopez who teaches you how to do it. Approach a small local business (restaurants, jewelers, auto dealers, clothing stores) look them up on all the social media platforms and see how active they are...if they are not...then offer to do it for them (for a fee). Minimal actual time spent for decent $$.

just google it...you're welcome
 

Still a university student, but when I'm strapped for cash I do freelance programming for companies. Once you get a few decent projects under your belt picking up a few projects for $300-$1000 isn't too difficult when ever you need it.

Local firms will bend over backwards if you have the right sales pitch.

 

I focus most on computer vision and automation of repetitive tasks. I write a lot of code that just automates complex tasks and allows the company to spend their time elsewhere.

I'll do the odd project like database web server stuff if they need that setup as well.

 

Here's how you do a side hustle, and do it in a manageable way.

Find a few expenses you have that are $50, $100, $200, $500, etc.

And list them from least to most expensive (only expenses you spend every month). At that point you start at the bottom and you create a stream that pays that much.

It's super fucking simple to start an automated, side gig that pays out $50 per month. Once you have that bill covered, you either expand it more to hit the next $100 bill, or you start a new one. Then once you have that you go with the $200 (see where this is going).

Because you're not going out trying to build a $50,000 a year side business from the start, you'll slowly accumulate the streams to pay all of your expenses from your parking fees all the way to your rent.

How do you eat an elephant, one bite at a time.

There are tons of ways: dropshipping, building funnels and using those funnels to sell funnels, affiliate marketing, blogging and posting, subscription services, etc.

You can find resources out there on the best things to start, but that's the method I'm seen most success with.

"It is better to have a friendship based on business, than a business based on friendship." - Rockefeller. "Live fast, die hard. Leave a good looking body." - Navy SEAL
 

by definition, a side hustle is a business venture that pays $$ with relatively little time spent to support the business.

You can either sell your low value time (babysitting, uber, tutoring, VirtualAssistant) You can sell your high value time (coding) You can sell physical goods (either you make yourself, or you sell goods that somebody else makes, and you act as a middleman) You can sell digital goods (education course, software, ebooks, graphic design) You can be a content creator (youtube, blog, etsy, etc...) You can sell real estate (either as an agent, or you can rent property you own...very different businesses)

You can be an affiliate (post your affiliate link to various places online, and you get a % those sales...amazon is the one many people start with...you earn 4-8% of sales from your links...and all you have to do to get started is have your friends/family use your amazon link to get to amazon before they buy anything...then you can post your link to facebook groups, youtube videos, twitter posts, insta posts, your blog, etc...)

So, there are lots of ways to have a side hustle.

You can sell custom design tshirts & hoodies (Merch By Amazon). You could sell food outside places that people congregate if you have a great recipe. (concerts, festivals, town square, bars & night clubs)

There are so many ways to make more $$. But each requires you to put in EFFORT. You might need to learn something new. You might need to put in work to build something. Even if you get into content creation (youtube, insta, etsy, pinterest, etc...) you will need to spend time, imagination and effort to create that content.

just google it...you're welcome
 

How has no one mentioned writing articles for paid platforms like Seeking Alpha, ValueWalk, InvestmentsRevolution, Motley Fool ....
They take like no time/effort at all for the likes of your average IB/CF/ER intern level of skill. On Seeking Alpha you can get a fair amount, and asssuming you are interested in finance/markets you're baisicly doing the work every day by keeping yourself in the loop so you just need to ramble off 1000ish words with lots of lingo and voila you've written an actionable piece of amateur investment insight. Seriously I thought this was more common

 
TradingCrux:
How has no one mentioned writing articles for paid platforms like Seeking Alpha, ValueWalk, InvestmentsRevolution, Motley Fool ....
They take like no time/effort at all for the likes of your average IB/CF/ER intern level of skill. On Seeking Alpha you can get a fair amount, and asssuming you are interested in finance/markets you're baisicly doing the work every day by keeping yourself in the loop so you just need to ramble off 1000ish words with lots of lingo and voila you've written an actionable piece of amateur investment insight. Seriously I thought this was more common

You're wrong on the no time part. Let me know how easy it is when you try it yourself with lots of lingo in 1000ish words filled with spelling errors.

 
Most Helpful

I left finance about a year ago to start a business/look to buy one and I started freelance consulting to pay the bills until cash would start coming in from the business.

I approached startups and companies that might need a hand raising debt and/or equity capital and offered to make them a CIM and financial model. The first few contracts I did for ~$1,000 since I had lot of time and not that much income coming in. Word quickly spread in entrepreneur circles and I started to get referred more and more. Fast forward a year and im charging $5,000 per CIM and Model + ~0.5% of capital raised. One of my clients just closed a 10M series A, which was quite nice.

Im not sure how much this could actually scale, but for now its nice as im making some good contacts and paying my bills quite well while I build equity in my other business.

 

I would think scaling would just involve hiring some IB folks who recently quit to start a business that has yet to grow (basically people who are where you were when you started freelance consulting). You could take a cut from their work for other startups and scale up accordingly. You'd have to do a little more research as to whether startups can afford your fees moving forward if there is an upcoming recession or if you scale up, but I think a lot of startups have enough funding/the people who run the startups come affluent enough backgrounds that it shouldn't be a problem.

 

Yeah I mean I could, but the work flow is insanely unpredictable and also would not be able to afford paying someone a salary. I would have to land a fairly large contract that includes a high retainer. I have a two clients on retainer right now paying me 1.5k a month to basically be a part time CFO and help with fundraising, which is nice.

 

My buddy works a marketing company that does Alcohol events and tastings. He set me up as one of the "brand ambassadors" You ever go into a liquor store and there is someone with wine and cheese doing a free tasting? Thats me.

It pays pretty well ($30hr) and I usually do 1 or 2 events on a Saturday of about 3 hours each. It honestly doesn't even feel like work because your just talking to people and offering free wine or beer or whatever your serving.

In addition to getting paid I usually get a free bottle or two of whatever im serving.

Look up MKTG or any other similar marketing company.

 

If you're savvy with a camera, events photographer aint a bad side hustle at all. I shoot student/professional events at my school and charge $100 an hour. Usually they're frat/sorority formals and I make $300 a night for unlimited drinks, free food, and photos on the side.

 

If photography is something that you want to do more of expand to weddings or (even better) babies. I used to say wedding photography/videography was a racket where people were overpaid, but I now know baby photography is even more ridiculous.

About 7-8 years ago I actually considered wedding videography and did a little bit a research. I determined that it was just not a job for me, but would be a great side gig for someone. You buy some pretty good equipment and pay that off with your first gig, every gig after that is pretty good money for ~4 hours on a wedding day and ~2 hours of editing. Also, wedding videography seems much less competitive than photography, at least when I got married.

twitter: @CorpFin_Guy
 

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