Start Your Side Hustle With These 6 Tips
It can be difficult to make enough money with one job, forcing many individuals to either take up second and third jobs, or start a side hustle. Even if you don’t need to make extra money to be comfortable, having some extra cash is nice when you want some little luxuries that are out of your budget. Side hustles can take up a lot of your time, energy, and cash, so it’s important that you don’t dive in unless you’re ready. Here are some steps you can take to get started.
Find Your Passion
Many people with side hustles dedicate all of their free time to it, so you better pick something you enjoy! It’s important to choose something you’re excited about, but it’s also important to pick something you can actually make money with. Otherwise, you’ll turn a hobby you once loved into a huge source of stress, potentially ruining it for yourself in the future.
Determine How You’ll Make Sales
One of the most important things you can do now for the future health of your side hustle is figure out your sales process, which is essentially the process of drawing in customers so that they can learn about your brand, connect with your message, and ultimately spend their money on your service or product. Will you be selling locally and trying to connect with your community, or will you try to make most of your sales online? This is just one of many decisions you’ll need to make before you can begin prospecting.
Test Your Market
Before you commit to one type of service or product, it’s a good idea to make sure your side hustle is viable within the current market. Start with a demographic you think you’ll appeal to, and ask some trustworthy and honest friends and family within that demographic to tell you what they think of the product or service you want to offer. If they’d pay for it, you may have found your niche. If not, you may want to go back to the drawing board.
Find What Makes You different
Once you’re confident you’ve found the right side hustle and market for you, it’s time to figure out what makes you different from all of the other small businesses out there. What are you offering that no one else is? If you’ve got a service or product that is similar to someone else’s, what about your service or product is different? Trends come and go quickly, but it’s you, your personality, and your brand that will keep people coming back for more time and time again. If customers can see your authenticity, you’re already on the right track.
Set Goals
It’s easy to say you’ll start your side hustle eventually, or you’ll research marketing options later, or you’ll polish up some product ideas this weekend, or maybe some time next week. Unfortunately, without realistic goals, you could be saying “next week” until next year. Make a list of everything you need to do to get started, then make some realistic goals for the first year of your business. Maybe you need to buy some supplies or make some prototypes. Maybe you want to reach 500 followers on Instagram. They can be bigger goals, but small ones can be just as motivating. What do you need to do to hit that first sale?
Launch
At the end of the day, the timing will never be perfect. You may never feel completely ready or confident enough to begin, but if you’ve done your research and prepared as best you can with what you have, the best thing you can do for your side hustle is to launch.
Starting up a side hustle can be intimidating, but it can also be incredibly rewarding. As long as you remain dedicated and passionate about what you’re doing, you can enjoy some extra cash and a growing small business.
