Side Hustles

One thing that COVID-19 has really pushed on people is having the ability to work from home. Digital marketers and content writers haven’t had much issue not being able to work in their offices each day but for those that don’t work from home or don’t have the ability to, making their salaries has been difficult. It’s pushed a lot of people into the realm of working from home whether they want to or not.

If you’re one of the lucky few who was an essential worker or you already worked from home, it wasn’t much of a change for you. Many who weren’t so lucky have been searching for various sources of income during this time, regardless of whether or not you think the shutdowns were necessary.

I’ve been looking into various ways to earn a side income from home and it’s harder than I thought. One thing I considered was content and copy writing but in order for that to become profitable, you need multiple clients and be willing to put in a lot of hours. The first jobs that are available don’t pay very well unless you have a lot of experience. I have a little bit of experience, which is why it was my first search for an extra income, but when others bid on writing jobs that are already paying very little, it drives the price through the floor and the time it takes isn’t worth it.

A friend of mine does construction on the side of his main job. It works for him because his family has been doing construction for a while, but he didn’t want to do it full-time. Unfortunately, COVID-19 put a damper on the construction business, but it hasn’t been killed entirely. Small independent jobs are still available but if you’re like me and you have no experience in construction, it can be difficult to get into. I’ll have to ask him to help me get some experience but it’s also not a job you can do from your house.

I saw that many articles said that starting a blog can be very profitable. Luckily enough, I already have one! Unfortunately, it doesn’t make any money. The main thing about making money from blogging is getting a lot of visitors. In order to get a lot of visitors, like hundreds, you need to have a theme. Mine is more of a personal blog. In order to make money, you need something that covers something people from all over want to read about whether it be finance, real estate, a hobby that others are interested in, or something like a review site. Since I have more of a personal/writing blog, I would need to write stories and new material consistently for a long time before I’d be able to make any money from this blog. I was writing consistently for a while around March of last year and I was getting about 600 views a month. It was great for viewership and I was writing a ton of blogs but not many stories or poems which I would need to punch out daily in order to get my viewership up higher but I let life get in the way too often. Although, the idea of making my living through posting my creative content to my blog is pretty sweet. I could also take all those stories and poems and publish them in a book on Amazon and get money that way too. That’d be the life.

Do you have any recommendations on what you would do or have done as a side job? I know for certain specialties there are plenty of jobs available to freelance with but some others not so much. What have you done as your side hustle, especially during COVID-19?