Simple Ideas for A Side Hustle to Try When Running a Small Business

When you start your own small business, the dream is generally to develop a company capable of consistently paying your bills and earning you a decent profit. However, as most small business owners will know, it often takes a while to reach this milestone. For the first couple of months to the first couple of years, you may find you’re not earning enough to pay yourself much of a wage. Many new business owners only just make enough cash to keep everything running smoothly in their organization. During this time, you might be tempted to take on an additional side hustle to help increase your income. The key to successfully running a business and side hustle at the same time, is finding something you can do in your spare time which isn’t going to leave you too drained for the main focus of running your business. Here are some options to get you started. 

Try Investing in Real Estate 

Investing is one of the best ways to make some extra income for the long-term, while you’re waiting for your business to take off. It’s also something a lot of business owners do throughout the life of their business, to ensure they have a strong safety net in place if something does go wrong. Real estate represents one of the more secure environments for investing for most people, and there are a multitude of ways to get involved. Business owners can leverage qualified business income deduction with REIT to save 20% on their taxable income. Using REIT or Real Estate Investment Trust Investments, the tax cut associated with this kind of investing allows you to significantly reduce what you pay on your taxes each year, while simultaneously building another source of income.  

Start Blogging as A Side Hustle

There’s a good chance you already have a deep knowledge of your industry if you’re creating a company in it. With that in mind, it’s worth looking into the potential of blogging. You can consider selling your writing to another company in a similar (but not competing) industry to yours as a way of making some extra cash with your knowledge. Alternatively, you can use your blog to generate affiliate income for your website, so you have another source of income connected to your main company. Not only will you be able to get some extra cash by recommending products to your customers, but you could also take steps to promote your own company and its products at the same time. The more content you create, the more you’ll improve your position on the search engines, and potentially strengthen your chances of finding new customers. 

Start Dropshipping 

If it’s taking a while to earn as much money as you’d like from your store selling custom-made products, you could always look to increasing your portfolio with dropshipping. Although you might not be able to access the same huge profit margins with dropshipping as you would when creating your products from scratch, you’ve still got an excellent opportunity for growth. With dropshipping, you simply list products for sale that complement your existing items, and when a customer makes a purchase, another third-party organization handles packaging and shipping the product to its destination. Dropshipping can be a good way to expand your earning potential without taking on the additional costs and challenges of finding warehouse space or fulfilling orders. 

Create an Online Course 

Most business owners have something valuable they can share with the rest of the world. While you might not want to tell everyone what your business secrets are, you can usually provide useful information related to your chosen industry. This is an excellent way to access an extra source of income alongside building your current business. Though it does take a little time and effort to research the content of your course, create the piece you want to share and promote the content with your audience, you should be able to minimize the amount of work involved after this. You can even list your course on pre-existing marketplaces where there are already a number of people you can reach. A course gives you more earning potential, while simultaneously improving your thought leadership and making you stand out among the competition. 

Start a Podcast as your Side Hustle

Speaking of fun ways to share your knowledge and expand brand awareness, starting a podcast could be one of the most effective ways to improve your income and advertise your company at the same time. Podcasting has grown increasingly popular in recent years as people look for more convenient ways to consume content on the go. Having your own business podcast is an excellent way to connect with your target audience and improve your chances of making a lasting impression on those who might choose to buy from you. It can also be a great way to create new relationships if you regularly meet with other influencers and thought leaders to have episodic discussions. The more your podcast grows, the more you can earn money through a combination of ads and sponsorships.  

Become an Influencer 

Finally, one of the best ways to earn some extra cash while building your business, is to become an influencer. You’ll need to dedicate a significant amount of time to building your reputation in your chosen industry and making sure you have a strong social media presence. However, becoming an influencer can open the door to endless partnerships and earning opportunities. Keep in mind, being an influencer can take a significant amount more work than some of the alternative side gigs mentioned here, so you may need to be willing to spend more time building your personal brand.  

Which Side Hustle Will You Choose? 

Whatever you choose for your ideal side gig, remember you can always find new ways to make extra money on the side while still working on building your own business. You may even find your side hustle ends up helping to grow your business too, as is often the case with blogging, content marketing, and podcast creation.