When my dad was my age, everyone has a main job that provided for the whole family, and some families needed both parents to have a steady income to support their families. If anyone wanted to make some extra cash on the side, the way to go was usually to save up some money instead of buying worthless crap, set up a side hustle for yourself, get some clients and generate extra cash while keeping your 9 to 5 job.
It would appear that, while this strategy still being a good way to earn more money in an already squeezed economy, the new side hustle is building new skills.
Instead of investing what would probably be thousands of dollars in materials, learning the trade or gig, getting through the hazzle of creating a customer base from scratch, and then hope it becomes a thing in your neighborhood, the way that most milllenials - which are around middle age right now - are following right now is to build their set of skills and become a freelance or contractor.
For example, take a look at all that it takes to make auto detailing your side hustle:
Equipment overhead is very low, you can really get going with a 5hp shop vacuum, some spray bottles, brushes, cloths, and a couple of chemicals. Add in a steam machine and a cheap spot extractor and you can be ready to tackle any interior. For the outside you need a couple buckets, some soap, and towels. If you do some planning in advance you can spend about $500 and be equipped to get any car clean. A pressure washer is handy but you can get by with a regular hose spray nozzle. You can do it in your own driveway/garage or do it onsite, using your client's power and water. There are a bajillion videos on youtube showing exactly how to do it. In terms of getting business, if you want to keep it as a side hustle then getting a few friends and family members to let you do it for cheap is the best way to get practice and start to build up a reputation. Insist that they tell people they know about you if you're good, you'll eventually build up a reputation. Once you have the hang of things and you know how to work quickly and effectively, you should be able to do an external car wash in under an hour, and tackle a dirty interior in 3h-6h. Make some packages and price yourself at $50 an hour.
But are side hustles still a thing? I know some people who have a side hustle and they run it themselves and honestly it sounds like a giant headache and longer hours to make the same amount of money you would make wageslaving.
See, nowadays millenials just straight up prefer to:
- Learn to draw you can do commissions for people by getting known on instagram/twitter, or get Patreon money. It's a highly competitive field and yet people are flocking to this kind of gigs by the thousands.
- I know it's a meme, but you can learn to code (I actually learned JavaScript to start as a freelancer). That's a skill that opens up the option of being a highly paid wageslave, but you can also do freelance work on the side.
I was doing some thinking, and even though I am not looking for a side gig because I already have my schedule full as fuck, and after some research I found that some side hustles - like the one I mentioned at the beginning, the old school side gig - are:
- Landscaping / snow removal
- Growing carolina reapers to sell to local biz
- Painting walls in upper middle class homes
- Car detailing
- Growing weed
On the other hand, we have new style of gigs like:
- Amazon fba
- Reselling anything on ebay/craigslist
- Amazon pod with books - find underserved niches and make low effort books * Coloring books for kids with different themes/notebooks for vegans/etc
- Learn web dev and sell sites or wfh as a free lancer
These are just some ideas, but why don't you share some of your insights in the comment section? We might get somewhere and come up with the next million dollar idea and well, we all live far from each other so there's no real competition by helping each other.