Side Hustles For Dummies - Alan R. Simon

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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!

      Multilevel marketing organizations

      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

       How to figure out if a given MLM’s compensation model is good for you

       Whether you can make any money if you’re way, way down the sales ladder

       How sales territories are allocated

       If you’re required to purchase a monthly allocation of products, or if you can purchase products as you sell them

      From a side-hustle perspective, MLMs have some interesting advantages and possible disadvantages. On the plus side, you can find an MLM for almost anything that you want to sell for your side hustle: clothing, health and wellness products, cleaning supplies, cooking-related products, makeup, and even (ahem) “adult” products. If you can imagine something, you almost certainly can find an MLM to join!

One possible drawback, however, is that if you join an MLM, much — maybe even most or all — of your selling will be to family members and friends. Before you head down the MLM road for your side hustle, think about the possibility of constantly pushing new products on your friends and family, or dealing with them as dissatisfied customers, or telling your sister or a parent that the automatic payment on their credit card was rejected last month…. Yeah, might not be a whole lot of fun.

      When I first jumped into the side-hustle game, I stuck with something very close to my day job as an Air Force computer systems officer by starting a small computer consulting and software development firm. I also began teaching and again stayed with tech topics for the classes that I taught. Then, when I wrote my first book, I once again stayed close to home, synergy-wise, and authored a book called How to be a Successful Computer Consultant (McGraw-Hill).

      Your side-hustle adventures may also have a high degree of synergy with your day job.

      Jack, the Scottsdale software developer who is doing part-time community college teaching, aimed for synergy with his side hustle, as did Mark, the Boston accountant who is creating a series of small business accounting videos that he’ll try to monetize.

      But what about Mark’s coworker Miguel, who will also be creating and uploading videos that he hopes to monetize, but whose videos are about bartending and related topics? Accounting … bartending … nope, not even close!

      Your side hustle can be closely related to what you do for your day job, or it can be totally different. Miguel opted for the totally-different fork in the road, as did Cindy, the Seattle mechanical engineer (though in Cindy’s case, she’ll actually be doing bartending).

      

If you’re trying out a side hustle to experiment with or begin the journey to a career change (see Chapter 1), then “something different” is a pretty good strategy for your side-hustle efforts. Or you may be like Cindy and Miguel, who enjoy their respective day jobs (for now, at least) but just want to do “something different” and make a little bit of money at the same time.

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