49 Best Side Hustle Ideas to Make $5,000+ Per Month

Income Potential: $15 to $35/hr

What is a Virtual Assistant?

A Virtual Assistant (Also known as VA) is a person who helps businesses from a remote location through their paid services.

Thanks to the development of high-speed internet facilities- file sharing, and real-time multimedia communication have proven to drastically increase the demand for virtual assistants to entrepreneurs and businesses that are on the internet (Blogging, Ecommerce, etc).

Moreover, If a business needs instant help, hiring a VA is much less complicated compared to bringing in a full-time staff.

What Exactly Does a Virtual Assistant Do? Tasks of a Typical VA?

Being a Virtual Assistant, you will have to provide your services as self-employed or as a contractor irrespective of your location.

These said services may include but are not limited to–

Social Media– Almost all of the businesses that are present online are opting for social media for driving leads to their websites. But most of them do not have time to create consistent content to share and engage with the audience on a regular basis.

Thus the need for VAs who have some expertise in the given topic to run their social media accounts on the business’s behalf.

So, if you have any experience in creating content for Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, etc this might be right up your alley.

Social media VAs are very high in demand in online businesses, so if you have these skills, this niche is for you–

• You can create visually appealing and shareable posts
• You can engage with the audience well
• Keep up with the trending topic

Admin Work– This niche is basically for administrative work. Booking appointments, managing emails, keeping track of official documents, data entry, and spreadsheets are a few examples.

So if you have any previous experience in an office job or you would like to do tasks like the above mentioned, this category might just be for you.

So basically, this niche is like any other office assistant job, except for the “bringing the coffee for the boss” part.

Content Creation– Content creation is really popular as this niche is the most lucrative of all. Good content is what really brings sales to the business, hence this is very crucial for any online business.

Moreover, content creation is hard, time-consuming, and tedious, this is why business prefers to outsource these jobs.

If you like creating well-written articles, reviewing products in detail, making good-quality videos, and editing videos, and photos, there is a good chance you’ll thrive here.

Ecommerce– Do you know that the eCommerce industry is expected to hit $4.5 Trillion in sales (Source: DisruptiveAdvertising)?

What does that mean?

These businesses are expected to grow at an exponential rate, therefore, e-commerce VAs are (and will be) in great demand.

Tasks for an Ecommerce VA– Product management, Inventory management, Shipping issues, and returns, Customer relations, Order tracking, and invoicing

These are just a few examples, there are many more services that you can offer!

If you want to know more about what you could offer and choose what suits you best, check out this list of over 150+ services that a Virtual Assistant can offer to a client by downloading it here.

How much Money do Virtual Assistants Make?

An average North American can earn anywhere from $35 to $50 per hour. This rate goes as high as $100 per hour depending upon the area of expertise and experience.

How to get started as a Virtual Assistant?

If you think Being a Virtual Assistant is something you can do and have a desire to be self-employed, I know you’ll find Gina’s course 30 Days or Less to Virtual Assistant Success incredibly helpful. Her strategies are solid and very practical to follow up.

Gina from Horkey Hand Book, a millennial mom from Minnesota, is an awesome example of how you can set up a VA business.

Following her course, many students end up getting hired by their first client before they finish the course.

Click here to get access to Gina’s Horkey Hand Book course and start your independent VA life

8. Create a Digital Course to sell

Income Potential: $1000 to over $100,000 monthly

Digital courses are the new model of modern education.

Independent teaching platforms has facilitated instant and cheap learning experience that people are loving because of their convenience.

For example, if over time, you have developed a desire to learn filmmaking, would you get yourself into a film-making college and spend $40,000 there just to pursue a hobby?

OR

Enrolling in a digital course online that costs just a fraction of that amount and will teach you just as much sounds more convenient.

I will choose that latter any day of the week!

And let me assure you, this mindset is more widespread than you think. People now, more than ever are enrolling in digital courses and are learning at their own pace.

And as a result, digital course creators are making a fortune by selling courses online.

So if you have a specialization on a given topic and you want to share the knowledge to the rest of the world, don’t shy away from creating a digital course, whether it is in textual format, explained video format, voiceover, or any combination of these.

People are utilizing platforms such as Teachable to build and sell courses online. Check out teachable to know you can create a digital course.

9. Make money as a transcriptionist

Income Potential: $25,000 to over $50,000 yearly

What does a Transcriptionist do?

A transcriptionist is like a professional typist who listens to recorded or live audio files and then converts them into text format by typing.

They offer their services to the medical, legal, and general transcription industries. Working from home as a transcriptionist has its benefits, including working at your own pace and according to your own schedule.

You have zero commute time with the comforts of your home. The only requirement for this job is to be able to type with speed and accuracy.

There are basically three types of transcription:

1. General Transcription
2. Legal Transcription
3. Medical Transcription

General transcriptionists transcribe on the media and research levels. This might include bloggers, podcasters, interviewers, researchers, YouTubers, marketers…the list goes on.

The legal transcriptionist transcribes in the legal areas and medical transcription for medical areas obviously.

How to Become a Successful Transcriptionist?

To be a Transcriptionist one needs to have the skill of typing fast, accurately, and error-free.

If you think this is something you can pull off, I recommend you to have a look at TranscribeAnywhere.

TranscribeAnywhere offers affordable, high-quality, proven transcription education that you can actually apply for getting big clients. You can learn to transcribe with excellence, and you can do it from anywhere

10. Photography and Videography Services

Income Potential: Depends on the service you provide

This is one of those creative fields where you will have the freedom to work on thing things you want (mostly). And as a self-employed individual and a shutterbug myself, I appreciate the creative freedom this side hustle provides.

There are quite a few ways you can use your photo and/or video skills to make quite a good income on the side. Some of those ways are:

• Sell your photos on websites like Shutterstock, Getty, etc.
• Start a photography blog
• Create a tutorial channel on YouTube
• Create a course online (on Teachable or skillshare)
• Set up a photography or video shoot business
• Sell hard/printed copies of your work
• Create an Instagram page focusing on your best work

When it comes to making money through your photo and video services, this income here isn’t fixed at all. It all boils down to the fact that by providing different services you can make different amounts of money.

For example: Only selling your photos on stock images website isn’t as sustainable as you think while on the other hand, selling courses and making YouTube tutorials has the potential to make quite a good income (up to $100,000 a month)

So I would suggest you experiment with different income formats if you’re just a beginner and see for yourself what works for you.

And to be honest, photography is quite a crowded space with people offering their services for almost all niches and at various price points.

That being said, with the right passion and an eye for exceptional photography, anyone can set themselves apart from such crowds and succeed in ways unimaginable.

One of the things that can set you apart is by creating your own online portfolio where you can showcase your work to potential clients and brands.

And if you choose to create online courses or tutorials, you can redirect those people visiting your website to the courses or youtube channel.

You can use various professional-looking portfolio templates offered by platforms such as Squarespace to get started.

11. Become a bookkeeper

Income Potential: $43,000 yearly

If you’re not familiar with bookkeeper or bookkeeping in general, let me clear the air first.

A bookkeeper is someone who prepares your accounts and documents the daily financial transactions of a company, small business, or organization.

As a bookkeeper, you will be responsible for the documentation of any type of financial transaction concerning the business or organization and hence you’ll be helping businesses to keep track of how much money comes in and goes out every month.

Your daily tasks might include:

• Recording sales and revenue
• Reconciling expenses
• Managing bills payments
• Managing payroll
• Producing financial reports whenever deemed necessary
• Filing receipts

After the recording of the transactions, an accountant will normally review the bookkeeper’s work, analyze the data, and make the adjustments needed before submitting the accounts.

Where can I find legit bookkeeping jobs?

Jobs openings can be found in your area by simply searching on Google: “Bookkeeping jobs near me”

12. Sell stuff on Etsy

Income Potential:  A few hundred to over $52,000 Yearly

I’m sure you’re aware of Etsy and what it is about by now. Etsy is a global marketplace for creative goods and has over 33 million buyers that bought Etsy $3.9 billion in 2018from merchandise sales.

Products sold on Etsy include:

• Arts
• Crafts
• Home Decor
• Seasonal goods
• Clothing and accessories
• DIY stuff
• Jewelry
• Handmade personal care items etc.

But it is to be noted that it’s not just a place to buy creative products but to also sell them. Thousands of sellers use it to sell their own brands and products every single day and make good money at the end of the month.

If you have a creative bug and would like to sell your creative goods such as paintings, accessories, crafts, etc, then you can definitely give it a try.

Check out Etsy’s seller page

13. Complete tasks on TaskRabbit

Income Potential: Depends

TaskRabbit is an app that matches freelance about and service providers to the local demand and helps them with everyday tasks.

This side hustle is best for people who do not have a set working schedule to get started so that they can choose to work whenever they’re free.

You can literally pick up the phone to accept a new task and can put it down whenever you feel you’re done for the day.

TaskRabbit is a low-commitment side hustle opportunity that pays you as you finish each task.

You can choose a wide variety of tasks such as cleaning, moving furniture, buying something on behalf of the customer, etc depending on your area, and make quite a few dollars at a time.

Join TaskRabbit

14. Make Money as a tutor

Income Potential: $30 to $60/hr