If you’re looking for ways to make more money, starting an online side hustle is a great solution. Once you land the right side hustle, you’ll have extra money for:
- Paying off debt
- Saving more money
- Investing
- And, other financial goals you might have
Not to mention, you can start to feel some peace of mind.
Think about all the benefits you can gain and how much closer you’ll be to achieving your financial goals.
Plus, many of these online side hustle ideas can be scaled full-time — it’s happened to many entrepreneurs!
13 Ways to Make Extra Money with an Online Side Hustle
1. Run Facebook Ads for Small Businesses
You’ll be running Facebook ads for local businesses, helping them create and execute a marketing strategy to grow their business. Some of the tasks you’ll do include:
- Creating ads
- Managing leads
- Monitoring the ad campaign
- Reporting results to your clients
You can make up to $1,000 to $2,000 per month running Facebook ads for companies and it only takes a few hours per week, once you’ve set up the campaign.
What you’ll love about this side hustle:
- Independent work: If you’re an introvert or if you love working alone, this online side hustle is just what you’re looking for. No need to work on a team or in a group setting. Running Facebook ads is independent work, giving you the freedom to work as you’d like and be the boss.
- Flexibility: You will enjoy the flexibility of creating your dream schedule, working from home, picking the clients you want to work for, setting your prices, and more.
- Unlimited income potential: You can charge between $1,000 to $2,000 per month per client. You can scale this side hustle to make a full-time income.
- Helping small businesses: You’ll play a part in helping valuable local businesses thrive and grow, helping business owners continue to stimulate the economy and support their families.
What are the requirements for this side hustle?
You don’t need a degree or certificate. You won’t need a background in marketing or experience with Facebook ads.
This job is perfect for beginners with the right training and skills in place.
If you’re interested in running Facebook ads for small businesses, check out the Facebook Side Hustle course.
You’ll gain valuable skills and learn how to run Facebook ads from scratch.
The creators of the course, Mike Yanda and Bobby Hoyt ran Facebook ads for businesses and used their experience to develop a course to help students make an extra $1,000/month or more from this online side hustle.
You can learn more about the Facebook Side Hustle course and get started.
2. Flipping Goods
Did you know you can flip goods for profit? Flipping is all around us, believe it or not.
Retail stores buy products at a wholesale price and resell at a retail price, flipping these goods for profit.
Pawn shops buy new and used goods from the public and flip them for a profit, when they resell to their customers.
It’s the same with car dealerships, thrift stores, websites and domains, and more.
This is an incredibly easy side hustle to start. Plus, it’s extremely flexible.
Begin by selling off the stuff you no longer use in your home. I started this one year and now every Spring and Winter I get rid of the extra stuff in my home by flipping it.
Go through your house and make a pile of the things you don’t use.
This can include:
- Gifts you received but never used
- Outgrown clothes
- Kids toys that your children no longer play with
- Seasonal home goods
- Home decor
- Small appliances
- Electronics
- Power tools
- Lawn equipment
- And more
How It Works?
Once you have the stuff you want to flip for profit you’ll need to sell it.
There are many places to sell used goods online and offline like consignment stores, marketplaces like Ebay, classifieds sites like Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace, etc.
After you sell off the extra stuff in your home, you can continue flipping by starting to source goods from places online or in person.
For example, you can find a designer handbag on clearance at a retail website for $20 and resell for full price at $50, making you a $30 profit.
Many people do this for a living, sourcing, and flipping goods for profit.
To learn more, head to Flipper University.
3. Start a Blog
Blogging is a fruitful, rewarding online side hustle that can grow into a bustling five-figure or six-figure business.
You’ll enjoy the perks of working for yourself, making unlimited income, working around a schedule you design, and more.
How To Get Started
First, pick a blogging niche. This is going to be what you’ll blog about. Some examples:
- Veganism
- Travel hacking
- DIY and crafts
- Homeschool education
- Saving money
- Retiring early
Next, build your blog. You’ll need hosting, a domain name, and a professional theme. From here, add content, connect with your audience, and promote your blog.
You can read more about starting a blog in our article here.
How to Make Money Blogging
There are many ways to make money with your blog. To make the most money, I recommend you build up multiple revenue streams. Here are some ways to monetize your blog:
- Ads — You can place advertising on your blog and get paid every time a website visitor clicks an ad. This is one of the most passive ways to make money blogging, though one of the lowest paying, unless you have a lot of traffic.
- Sponsored posts — Get paid to blog by companies who want to promote to your audience. Brands will contact you or you can cold pitch to brands. Then, create a campaign to broadcast a brand’s products to your readers. You’ll get paid a flat fee for this usually and it can range from $50 to $1,000 per post, according to this source.
- Affiliate marketing — You will refer products to your readers and earn a commission if your referral results in a sale.
- Products — Create your own products and sell to your audience. This can include digital courses, ebooks, printables, or physical products like sweatshirts, coffee mugs, prints, and more.
- Services — Sell your services to your audience, which can include consulting, coaching, and more.
Check out more on how to monetize your blog with these 6 strategies.
4. Freelancing
Do you have skills that you can monetize?
What kind of work do you do in your nine-to-five job?
Consider working as a freelancer. You’ll get paid to work for clients and while you won’t have job benefits like a 401(k) or health insurance, in many cases freelancers make more money than employees doing the same work.
It may even turn into a full-time opportunity for you.
Here are some examples of freelance roles you can pursue:
- Writer
- Editor
- Proofreader
- Translation
- Transcriptionist
- Bookkeeper
- Accountant
- Graphic designer
- Illustrator
- Video editor
You don’t need a degree and while you’ll be working for your clients, you will be the boss of your freelance business. You can pick who you want to work for, set your own rates, determine your working hours, and more.
Score freelance jobs in online job banks and job websites like Indeed, Media Bistro, Guru, and Remote. You can also look on social media using Facebook, LinkedIn or others.
Here is a podcast episode where we talk about how to land freelancing clients.
5. Virtual Assistant
A virtual assistant (VA) is a personal assistant that helps their clients online. This is the kind of job that’s perfect for people who are well-organized, detail-oriented, and great communicators.
If you’re an introvert and wondering what kind of online side hustle would work for you, this is a prime example of an online job to look into.
As a VA, your tasks will vary based on the needs of your client.
It’s not unusual to do work like:
- Email management
- Calendar management
- Social media management
- Appointment setting
- Note-taking during virtual summits or conferences
- And other data entry and research-related work
You can set your own rate, working hourly or on a project rate, like $1,000/month.
It’s fairly easy to scale this job. You just take on more clients.
For example, if you charged $1,000/month for one client, you could easily decide to work with three clients for a total of $3,000/month.
Plus, you could hire your own staff, outsourcing some work and functioning like a virtual assistant agency. You could give all the work to your staff in fact, and just manage the entire operation.
If you had 10 clients at $10,000/month, outsource the work to other VA’s, splitting the income 50/50. You’d be making $5,000/month just for management of the whole project. This frees up space to take on even more clients.
Virtual assistance is a good fit for a lot of people who need online work so they can stay home with their kids, watching over young children, or homeschooling. It’s also good for people who may be traveling, going to school or have other needs, where an online job would be the best fit for them.
If this sounds like a job you’d like to pursue, see if you’ve got what it takes and look into Fully Booked VA.
6. Pinterest Virtual Assistant
Did you know you can be a VA just for Pinterest?
Pinterest is a powerful visual search engine. It’s responsible for driving loads of traffic to websites. Businesses are looking for professionals to manage it for them.
That’s where you, as a Pinterest VA would come into play.
You’ll do things like pin content, design Pinterest graphics, follow relevant users, and more. You’ll keep your client’s Pinterest account thriving so they can continue to get traffic to their business.
You’ll get the same flexibility as being a VA but your focus will be on Pinterest.
You can charge up to $500/month as a Pinterest VA and it only takes a few hours of your time each week.
If you love playing on Pinterest all day and this sounds like a job you can do, check out the course from our good friend Kristen, where you can learn how to become a Pinterest virtual assistant in 2020.
7. Ecommerce
Build your own eCommerce store and make money selling stuff to the public.
This can include selling physical goods or digital goods. Here are some examples:
- Digital courses
- Ebooks
- Digital planners
- Digital calendars
- Coffee mugs
- T-shirts
- Socks
- Footwear
- Home decor
- Consume electronics
- Accessories
- Pet supplies
Picking a niche around something you enjoy will make it more fun and a lot less like work.
Build your store using Shopify where you can apply a professional store theme, outfit it with plugins to help with customer service, marketing, sales, and more.
Source your goods, set prices then, launch to the public!
My first store earned me $25 my first week and 2 years later I was making $30,000/month.
If you have dreamed about having your own retail store, now is your chance. Start creating a business for yourself that can grow, provide you personal enrichment, and be an excellent source of income as an online side hustle.
Check out this free guide to learn how to start your Shopify store.
8. Proofreading
Are you good at spotting errors in writing?
Proofreaders do just that! They are paid to spot discrepancies in spelling and grammar.
You should be detail-oriented and a great communicator.
You will have a variety of clients from attorneys, writers, podcasters, teachers, and more.
Find work on job sites like Upwork or Remote.
If you’re not confident of your proofreading skills, check out this course by Proofread Anywhere which will get you proofreading-ready fast.
How Much Can You Make?
Can you make a living as a proofreader?
Definitely.
In fact, the creator of Proofread Anywhere, Caitlin Pyle made around $43,000 in her first year as a proofreader!
The average salary in the U.S. is nearly $22/hour. So, working 20 hours per week can bank you an extra $1,760 per month while full-time, you can make just over $3,500 per month.
This gig could be a great choice whether you’re looking to make a little extra money or launch a full online career.
9. Create an Online Course
Whether you believe it or not, you have the expertise that others would pay to learn. You can use that expertise to create online courses that you can sell.
There are courses for everything, from crafts to yoga to marketing.
Are you retired from running an online business of 10 years? Teach others how to do it.
Do you produce eye-catching illustrations in your day job? Write a curriculum on it so other aspiring illustrators can learn to do the same.
Course creating is really quite simple. Once you’ve chosen your topic, create your curriculum. This can be 100% text-based, all video, or a mix of both.
You can host the course on your own website or on platforms such as Teachable or Kajabi.
Courses have become extremely popular in recent years. There is an audience of people sitting ready and waiting to devour the information you have to share.
If creating a full-blown course doesn’t sound appealing you can get started with smaller digital products such as ebooks and printables.
If you’ve got something to teach, head to our 9-step guide on how to create an online course to get started.
10. Sell on Etsy
For those who are crafty, why not monetize your hobby by selling on Etsy?
It’s the place where tons of creators are selling their homemade chocolate chip cookies, handmade knitted chunky blankets, digital artwork, wedding decor, party supplies, jewelry, and much more.
What makes Etsy a little different from operating your own eCommerce business is that Etsy is a huge marketplace. According to Similar Web, Etsy gets over 350 million visits every month!
A big reason why a lot of businesses fail every year is lack of marketing.
They either don’t know how to do it or they’re not doing enough of it.
Etsy takes this pressure off you because as a seller, you have instant access to their millions of shoppers that visit the marketplace every single month.
Why not take a piece of that pie?
Place your products for sale in their marketplace and focus on what’s really important, your craft.
Check out the Etsy Seller Handbook to help you get started with your Etsy store.11. Teach English Online
Work as an English tutor teaching English to Chinese students online.
You’ll be paired with a student who you will teach English to from home. Classes are short, at under 45 minutes long. You’re given a curriculum and you will work part-time, making up to $25/hour.
- You don’t need to speak any other languages other than English
- You don’t need a teaching degree or an English degree
You will need to have stable internet access and a headset and be willing to work at odd hours due to the time difference.
Some of the ESL companies may require you to have a bachelor’s degree, too.
Where to Get Started?
You can check out some of these ESL companies to learn more:
12. Sell on Amazon FBA
Amazon selling can be a lucrative, personal-enriching online side hustle. Many people are living off their income from their Amazon FBA store and this is how they’re doing it.
What is Amazon FBA?
You’ll be selling on the Amazon Marketplace in their FBA (fulfillment by Amazon) program. FBA is a program where sellers can team up with Amazon for the fulfillment of their orders.
Normally, if you have a sale on Amazon, you will be responsible for picking, packing, and shipping the order to the customer. You can still run your Amazon business this way under their FBM (fulfillment by merchant) program.
However with FBA, you will first ship all your goods to an Amazon warehouse and when you make a sale, Amazon will pick, pack and ship the order to the customer.
Sellers love the FBA program because it’s so hands-off for them.
Fulfillment can be a long, hard, and tedious process. This program takes it off the Amazon seller’s plate so they can focus on other parts of their business.
How can you make money with Amazon FBA?
You will become an Amazon seller and participate in the FBA program.
First, you will source goods, and these can be products around your house, gifts you received but haven’t used, etc. Then, ship to an Amazon warehouse. Add your product listings on Amazon and wait for sales to come in.
13. Pinterest Affiliate Marketing
You may know what affiliate marketing is but, have you heard of Pinterest affiliate marketing?
It’s really neat because you can focus all your efforts on that one platform, compared to the multiple traffic methods that may stretch you thin with traditional affiliate marketing.
What people love about affiliate marketing on Pinterest is that no website is required.
Though you can definitely use your website, if you’re a business owner or a blogger, it’s not required to make money on Pinterest.
How it Works?
First, you’ll join affiliate programs. Then, you will create your Pinterest graphic, which you can do effortlessly with Canva. Lastly, you will upload your Pinterest graphic to Pinterest, write a keyword-rich pin title and pin description, along with sharing the affiliate program url in the pin, and post it.
That pin will go on Pinterest circulating forever, making this an awesome semi-passive income stream for you.
Final Word on 13 Ways to Make Extra Money with an Online Side Hustle
Whether you’ve found your true passion project in an online side hustle or you have found a gig that allows you to pursue a passion (i.e. crushing your debt, building an emergency fund, etc.), I hope you’ve found some ideas in our roundup.
While some of these side gigs may sound like a lot of fun, they all take work, diligence, and drive to make them work for the long-term.
Whatever direction you take, you will be happy with the results you achieved working an online side hustle. Which side gig will you be taking on?
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