My thoughts on side hustles likely differ from others. Some are possibly good to earn a quick buck or two, and I’ve tried stuff like that in the past, but I see them individually as a potential new job to replace current ones. For example, if I were to do something like creating a digital product… I want to go all out on that in hopes of a return large enough to allow me to focus full time on that thing, or subject, etc.

Side Hustles I’ve Tried

 

Voiceovers

 

Perhaps one of my first side hustles ever and certainly, one of the first times I felt what true excitement was.

 

I use to work in fast food and I’d often be told that I had a great speaking voice and some would even go as far as saying “You should go to radio”. This was always nice to hear and certainly boosted my ego when mentioned, however, I always told myself that there was nothing I could do with a talent like that. Radio isn’t a possibility for me.

 

Fast forward and I’m on YouTube looking for some anime to watch, and I find a post from “Anime Sensei” looking for someone to read off a top 10 list for their channel. Thinking this was a sign, I applied to be the one to do it and to my surprise… I was accepted.

 

I did my first ever voice over and it has since been viewed over 1 million times! You can check out the video here.

 

I offered to do this for free because I didn’t want to miss out on the opportunity, and I’m so happy I did. I, later on, discovered the world of making money from the comfort of my own home. I decided to create an account on…

 

Fiverr

 

Fiverr opened a lot of doors for me. This is where everything started because I finally got a glimpse of the idea that you don’t have to follow a traditional path. The first gig that I put up was for voiceovers and it’s all I would do with any amount of free time I had. I was recording voiceovers in a closet trying to muffle any noise out with the clothes laying around in hopes to land a high-paying gig.

 

While I spent tons of time on it and ended up getting to “level one seller” (Need great rating, response time and at least $400 earned to get) I ended up slowing down on it after moving and getting a “real job”. This job would take about 60-70 hours a week out of me and after a while… I ended up quitting fiverr and voiceovers all together because I simply didn’t have much time to work on it and also wasn’t making much money from it to begin with. This was rather sad but certainly wasn’t the end of my ventures, in fact, I don’t see myself ever stopping with trying new fun and better ways to make money.

 

A few months had passed and the joy of my new plumbing job had quickly passed, and I was back to the mindset of “How can I make better money and work for myself” which led me to…

 

Shopify | Dropshipping

 

I learned about dropshipping through many desperate YouTube searches on how to live “the good life”. When I started learning about this, it wasn’t nearly as known as it is today.

 

I stumbled upon a guy named Gabriel St-Germain and he spoke of making over $600,000 in 3 months through dropshipping which was just about the craziest thing I had ever heard, and excited the living shit out of me. I watched all of his videos then began further researching into how to get started with this thing.

 

Eventually, I opened up my very own store. Product of choice: Reusable swim diapers.

 

My approach was to make it a one product store in attempts to make it look as if I were the creator of it. At the time, this appeared to be a great idea and product but sadly I was wrong.

 

Obviously, as most first attempts go… I was highly unsuccessful and didn’t manage to even get one sale. This was mostly due to my lack of understanding of multiple different aspects of the business (Thorough product research, website creation, Ad creation and running facebook ads, etc). I had simply copied a lot of peoples’ strategies without genuinely knowing what I was doing, which lead to a failure of a business. I also had very little to invest, which certainly didn’t help.

 

This fail certainly had me step back and think for a bit for a few months. My thoughts were along the lines of “This wouldn’t have worked anyway, at least now you know” and “The people you’re watching on Youtube are just anomalies” etc.

 

After a while… I saw a few different streamers income reports which amazed me, and I began learning about how much is possible to earn while streaming even as a relatively small streamer, which lead me to the idea that I should play games and go live on…

 

Twitch.tv

 

I don’t have tons to say here and maybe you don’t even see this a possible side hustle. However, to me, I thought it to be the perfect way to get home from working my full time job and use up the extra hours that I would be playing games anyway, to stream.

 

The idea was this: I get home from work and as soon as I start playing a game (“a game” definitely means rocket league or OSRS) that I start streaming. This was simply because I was absolutely already going to play a game when I got home. So if I were to stream the entire process, it was possible to gradually grow into something big, or, that some onlooking streamer who already has a following to some degree would like my personality or something that I was doing, and possibly even become a collaborator with me and shout me out lol.

 

I failed to realize how tough it would be to stand out amongst the countless thousands of others playing the same game as you. I believe I ended my best streaming day with 11 unique viewers.

 

This wasn’t the success I wanted but it got me looking into yet another direction…

 

YouTube Gaming Channel

 

Yet another shortlived venture. I believe I made 6 or 7 videos in total, which actually did end up getting some views here and there but nothing to brag about. At the peak I ended up getting about 500 views on one of my videos, which to my surprise, was a Runescape video. Still, didn’t have enough motivation and passion for it at the time so it fell through.

 

I will say though, that I still absolutely love the idea of this and will likely end up doing something similar in the future, it just won’t be anytime soon. My focus is with what I’m currently doing and after I get settled in, maybe I’ll do this again.

 

If I were to start another gaming channel though, I would certainly outsource all of the boring stuff that I don’t particularly like or am even good at (editing & thumbnail).

 

Around this time I found myself searching for something else to push me forward in the right direction so I could quit my job, something that had clear and obvious rewards if done correctly. Something like… oh yes

 

Shopify | Dropshipping #2

 

Here we are again. Armed with a lot more knowledge than my previous attempt and slightly more money to work with, I went after this business model yet again. Maybe it was the freedom associated with, maybe it was the money to possibly be made, or maybe even the respect I would earn for myself if I made this work against all odds. I decided I wanted to give this another try.

 

Product of choice: Maternity seat belt

 

My approach was again, to make it appear as if I were the original creator of the product… to create a brand around this one thing to make it feel like this is all I do and put energy into. I felt more confident going into this one though, because I genuinely knew that it was a good product. I knew this because at that point I had been through 2 pregnancies with my wife, and this seat belt accessory proved to solve a problem that a lot of women had.

 

It would reconfigure your seatbelt to where it’s not directly over the stomach of the pregnant individual, but instead, essentially around it. So if someone were to get into a minor accident, this accessory would prevent the seatbelt from hurting the baby or at the very least, mitigate any injury.

 

You’ll be happy to know that I ended up getting sales with this, 2 sales in fact, but it wouldn’t last long. The reason it didn’t last was not because of the product, but because of me. I didn’t like the idea of selling a product that could possibly malfunction during a crucial time and result in a death, which was pointed out to me by one of my commenters on a facebook ad that I ran.

 

I know me, and the guilt I would feel during something like that would be too much. So I let the product go.  Fun fact: I later discovered that someone else had ran the product after me and ended up making hundreds of thousands of dollars off of it. Their ads had thousands of likes, comments and shares which taught me two things…

One: I need to work on making better and more compelling ads and

Two: I have the capability of choosing a winning product.

 

Regardless, I decided once again to move on from dropshipping. Lord knows I had tons of other things to deal with during that time, anyway. About a year later and I decide that it’s time for…

 

Shopify | Dropshipping a 3rd time lol

 

I’ll keep this one short. I’ve kept going back to dropshipping because the business model seems about as good as you could get if you want to work for yourself and make serious money, I’ve since learned there’s a lot more opportunites.

 

The product I went with was simply not good enough. My product was essentially a pooper-scooper that comes with a bag attached to the end of it so you don’t have to pick it all up with your hands.

 

I bought it myself and even I wasn’t using it for my dog which is how I knew it wasn’t very good lol.

 

I learned a loads more about the business this time around though! Every time I go through this I end up learning a whole hell of a lot of useful stuff. I also realized that the reason I take such a long break is essentially because I despise the website and ad creation portion of it.

 

This part would take me ages to do and obviously, the end results have never been too good anyway. It would burn me out before even officially launching my store, so from now on and anytime in the future…

I will be outsourcing all the stuff I hate!

Kindle Direct Publishing

 

This one I would say doesn’t really count at the time being because my goal wasn’t to make any money with this, I just happened to make a bit off of the small book I published.

 

HOWEVER

 

I will say that this is an absolutely viable method for making a lot of money. I’ve heard of folks outsourcing the entire thing (Book cover, content, etc) and making thousands and thousands of dollars. The process itself is very simple you just need a little cash to get it going.

 

This is a serious business worth doing and I do plan on going more in-depth on this in the very near future, possibly as part of a Youtube video. Speaking of Youtube…

 

YouTube

 

Very new to this and while I’m fully aware of the money possible to be made, haven’t made any as of right now. I will come back and let you know when that happens though, also, check me out on Youtube

 

Affiliate Marketing

 

Again, very very new to this and just started as of a few days back but I will come in for the update when it’s applicable.