This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey listeners, thanks for tuning in today. My name is Chris Guillebeau. In today's episode, we're gonna address a common challenge faced by many aspiring side hustlers. What is that challenge? It is finding a business idea that requires minimal investment and time commitment.
Now, it just so happens that if you wonder about that, you're in the right place because that question is very aligned with the mission of side hustle school. We're all about not spending a lot of money doing things frugally without going into debt, without seeking funding, and then that time commitment as well. In a lot of ways, that's more important than money. Like you could not spend money, but something that requires hundreds of hours of your time. I mean, that's an investment that most people can't make.
So I'm always interested in serving our audience, which I think of, by the way, as busy people. Busy people who have lots of stuff going on. They got lots of responsibilities. They often have full-time jobs, or at least one part-time job, maybe a full-time and a part-time job together. They've got family stuff.
They've got other things they're trying to do. They wanna have hobbies in their own time. Of course, they have relationships. So all that to say, our listener here, Brenda, she is a single mom with a full-time job looking to supplement her income. And we wanna get her a serious income, by the way.
We don't wanna just tell her to drive for Uber Eats or DoorDash, you know? We wanna find a low-risk, high-reward side hustle for Brenda and our other listeners out there. So my goal is, as always, to give you some quick insights on how to get started without breaking the bank or sacrificing too much of that precious time. Let's see if we can find a good idea for Brenda. Her question and my answer coming right up.
[Music]
Hi, this is Brenda from Kansas City, Missouri. I discovered your podcast through a friend's recommendation and I'm excited to learn more about side hustles. As a single mom with a full-time job and limited funds, I'm looking for ways to supplement my income to support my family. So I'm curious to know which side hustles would be ideal for me to start with minimal investment and time commitment while still having the potential to grow. Ideally, I'd like something that can be done primarily from home.
[Music]
Hi, Brenda, I hear you. And thanks for tuning into the podcast. I'm so glad you're finding it helpful. Kudos to you for wanting to explore side hustles while balancing the full-time job, being a single mom that has no small feet. So let's look at some ideas that require minimal investment, can be done from home and have the potential to grow.
And in this situation, what we wanna do is kind of narrow in on a category. And from the beginning of the podcast, I've tried to kind of categorize all the different stories and such. If you look at the website and the archives, like each episode that has a story or a case study, it's usually categorized, well, I guess it's always categorized, but it's usually categorized well, let's say that, in terms of whether it is something to do with education, like online tutoring or teaching or selling a digital product that can also be education or a freelance service, affiliate marketing, et cetera. So let's just talk about a few of these things 'cause all of them can work in different ways for work from home, minimal investment with potential to grow, but you just wanna figure out what's best for you. So let's start with freelance work.
This is not always a low time investment. So I do wanna just kind of state that upfront, but most people have some kind of skills and experience that can work with a platform like Upwork or Fiverr, good place to start at least. Now, as I said, I'm not trying to encourage people to like just do the gig economy. I wanna help people do something really legit that's going to make real money for them, but it's not a bad start. Now, I also mentioned online tutoring or teaching.
There's websites like tutor.com, connecting educators with students who need help. You can set your own schedule, et cetera. But really to go to the next level, we wanna look at something like selling a digital product. So a platform like Gumroad is great for that. If you make a course or a printable or a template or an ebook or something else, of course there's a time investment on the front end, but they can generate passive income.
So that's good, that's like really good. So check out Gumroad and see if that might inspire you in some way. I used to work with Gumroad many, many years ago. I used to sell products on Gumroad and I don't these days, but it's definitely a helpful resource. So affiliate marketing, next category, promoting products or services that you genuinely believe in and also genuinely earn a commission for every sale made through your unique referral link.
So this could be through a blog, a social media account, a YouTube channel, all focused on some kind of niche that attracts an audience that wants to buy those products. We have a story coming up, I think it's in about a week or so, of a guy who earns $100,000 through camera equipment referral links. So definitely with the right product, with the right match between product and audience, this is a great category to go into. It's been around a long time, it's not going anywhere. You could also look at, I'll give you one more here, print on demand.
So designing and selling custom products like t-shirts, mugs, phone cases through print on demand services like Printful or Teespring. You create the designs or you could use AI art to make the designs, lots of people are doing that now. And those platforms handle the production, the shipping, the customer service. So you have very, very little in the way of startup costs. All right, I know that's a lot of ideas there, but I like to give people ideas.
Honestly, what you're looking for is the thing that aligns with your interests and skills so that you'll be more likely to stick with it. And lastly, it's gonna take some trial and error. So just keep trying stuff, you know? If something doesn't work, just move on, it's okay. You're not a failure if that happens, it just means that one idea wasn't the right thing at this time.
Brenda, you've got this, keep pushing forward. Listeners, you've got this too, I'm cheering you on. Let me know how you're doing. You can say hi from the website, sidehustleschool.com or chrisguillebeau.com, my weekly blog. I've got a new episode every day and I just hope something is helpful and encouraging to you.
It's all completely free. My name is Chris Guillebeau. You're listening to Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
