Definition: A side hustle is a means of making money alongside one’s main form of employment or income.
What has been a side hustle for you or what is your “dream” side hustle??? (or area of focus)
When we had property in rural Ontario I always thought we saw rural side hustles in action. Country homes with often homemade signs near the road advertising things they sold (honey, maple syrup, antiques, eggs) or side services they offered (dog sitting, pet grooming, knife sharpening).
Those are pretty down to earth side hustles but the idea of a side hustle has always intrigued me. My H I guess started a side hustle of selling things on eBay shortly before he retired and now he does it basically full time. Quite successful $ wise.
Interested to hear you or your family side hustles!
I used to write web content (ad content, blog posts) and got paid by the word. It was pretty easy and though the pay wasn’t great, it was my “fun money” in our leaner years when it felt like every penny of my salary was needed for family expenses.
A neighbor of mine turned his biggest liability (his age) into a huge side hustle (he now employs other people). He was a mid-level IT guy working at a big company before his retirement (he got offered a package to leave and he took it). He had a hypothesis that his was not the only huge company still using some of the “almost obsolete” software packages (mostly internal stuff- payroll, procurement, facilities management, timecards, etc., not the more sophisticated technology used in supply chain, manufacturing, finance, sales). The vendors of these products have either stopped supporting them- or have been acquired by the big guns and getting someone on the phone to help you troubleshoot is hard, painful, and sometimes impossible.
So my neighbor is the “help desk” for companies who still use the old stuff and he’s now hired a bunch of other “too old to keep up with technology” people to help him because the demand is huge. They know this stuff inside and out- worked with it for over 30 years, and they can debug, or figure out what the problem is, or even help someone know what to do when the printer is no longer working with the “print” function.
Such a simple idea! He tells me that most companies are in the process of big overhauls so that a few years from now, the old technology will mostly be gone… but there will always be a need for someone who can help with the upgrade, or just know what to do when the software which tells your toilet paper/janitorial supply company that it’s time for a reorder no longer functions.
He’s got several retirees working for him now and it’s kind of a hilarious business model. They are all making more money than they did working fulltime and it’s a bit of poke in the eye to their former employers!!!
It seems that big companies don’t like their employees sitting on the phone for 45 minutes waiting for a vendor helpdesk to say “Gee, we don’t know how to help you” any more than individuals do!
A guy I know started a similar side hustle that is now his main job in retirement. He repairs old scientific instruments that the manufacturers stopped servicing. Scouts junk on eBay and other auctions etc. for parts and keeps a large inventory of said parts in his garage.
I put up a good sized hoop house (unheated greenhouse) a few years ago. I use it to start seedlings for myself and I also grow many more to sell out at the end of my driveway. I don’t make a lot of money but I did pay for the hoop house in the first year with profits. I enjoy growing things so it’s relaxing most days that I’m working out there. I’ve had many people return year after year to purchase more seedlings so I must be doing something right.
I could see myself doing small handyman jobs one day. I used to do home remodeling and am good with most things carpentry and electricity related. Many companies don’t care to do small jobs like putting on a storm door, etc. I could easily start a side job doing similar small tasks. Maybe when I’m ready to retire.
I get contacted by consulting firms to speak with their clients about my area of expertise. I set my rate and they send me gift cards for Amazon. I clear it with my company’s compliance before I do it. They usually find me via LinkedIn, and some of them are repeats now.
My S sells on Amazon. He can make 2 or more times the salary of his full time job as an EE. We’ve urged him to keep his career as well.
I am a consumer advocate and patient panelist on an assortment of with pharmaceutical and other roles. I get modest honoraria and lots of satisfaction.
My dad was the king of the side hustle. As a young man he worked at the Uniroyal tire factory.
On the side he sold oranges, killed chickens ( I don’t know the details), delivered appliances and ran poker games in the basement.
I need to write a book.
One of D1’s co workers (an EM doc) runs a podcast where he analyzes how realistic and survivable wounds are in various video games, and how they would affect a player/character IRL. According to him, he makes almost as much money from podcast subscribers/sponsors as he does from his actual job in the ER.
We raise and sell ponies. It’s not so much now that my farmhands left starting their own lives, as we only have 1-2 foals per year, but in our heyday we had 32 ponies on the farm.
It never paid as much as H’s real job.
Since Covid I’ve started playing the stock market. I’ve only used trends vs deeper investigations, but I’m not doing too bad and I find it very intriguing. Assuming I give up teaching, it will likely be what I continue doing. I will probably earn more TBH, though of course, the risk is greater financially.
