20 side-hustle ideas you can start

The beautiful thing about the digital age is the limitless opportunities that we can tap into regardless of where we are in the world. With the cost of living rising, you probably aren’t going to get a raise high enough or fast enough to balance out your new expenses.

Now is a great time to start looking into side hustles that you can do with just your computer and an internet connection. Another good thing is that you can learn how to do all of these side hustles from free courses, YouTube videos and online forums. I will also throw in a few side hustles that you can dive into if you have a car or a house.

With services like PayPal, Payoneer and Wise, we can connect to any platforms payment services for pay-outs and if we need to directly send credit card invoices to international clients, we can use services like WiPay, Fygaro or the bank's e-commerce solutions.

Without further ado, here are 20 side hustles that you can start:

1. Become a rideshare driver

2. Online coaching in your area of expertise

3. Social media management

4. Create social media content for businesses

5. Affiliate marketing

6. Sell stock photos/videos/graphics

7. Buy and sell products of your choosing

8. List your property on Airbnb

9. Become a virtual assistant

10. Online tutoring

11. Start blogging

12. Start a podcast

13. Manage social media profiles

14. Become a proofreader

15. Become a transcriptionist

16. Become a freelance writer

17. Freelance voiceover artist

18. Design WordPress, Wix, and Shopify sites

19. Start a task business

20. Sign up for food delivery service (Food Drop, Skip D Line, WiEats)

If you have a vehicle then I would highly recommend you have that car make money for you and start looking at joining the rideshare apps, or, if you don’t want to transport people, you can join the food delivery services. The great thing about these options is that you can work 100 per cent on your time.

If you want more ideas about what types of freelancing jobs you could be doing, I advise you to take a trip to Fiverr.com and start just looking through all of the various jobs that are available on the platform. There are thousands!

The other great thing about freelance platforms like Fiverr, Upwork or Freelancer.com is that you already have tons of skills that you are probably taking for granted, and you could be listing those skills on the platforms so that you can perform those tasks for clients anywhere in the world.

Remember, a side hustle doesn’t need to be something that replaces your full-time income – but if it eventually does, then great.

I would also advise you to start doing some free courses so that you can learn new skills so and start creating that side income. Some of my favourite places to get started would be HubSpot Academy, Alison.com and YouTube.

When I began Droid Island, it was just a blog teaching about smartphones and how to get things done on your devices. I added Google AdSense and started receiving cheques in US dollars for the web traffic it was building up.

I was then able to find suppliers for phones and started to resell the products.

Even though I did venture into the world of brick and mortar, I closed my store down because I learned how to turn my blog into an e-commerce website and pushed all of my sales through the website. Rather than buying products and stocking them, I shifted to a dropshipping model, where, once the order was made on my website, I would have my suppliers ship the products directly to my customers.

I went from spending well over $20,000 a month in brick-and-mortar costs to spending US$5 per month, which was the cost of hosting my website. I didn’t run ads because I was creating social media content, and blogs and I learned how to become Googleable. This meant for every product people were searching for, my website came up on page one of Google and I was able to grab sales more easily, because my content and website were showing up on the number-one platform people go to get information and start their sales journey – Google!

We have options for generating an income, folks, and there is no better time to get started on adding a side hustle than today. It’s much easier to start a freelance job, and more lucrative, than hoping one day we finally get that raise in salary from our employers.

Keron Rose is a digital strategist who works with Caribbean entrepreneurs to build their digital presence and monetise their platforms. Visit Keronrose.com to learn more or check out the Digipreneur FM podcast on all podcast directories.