By Hanniz
Side hustles are exciting and a great way to bring extra money into your bank account every month. Take some time to examine each potential side hustle, and do your research. Then choose the side hustle that best fits your life and goals.
1. Rent Your Car When It Isn’t in Use
If you have a vehicle that doesn’t get used much, you could rent it out and make extra money.
Car Peer Sharing platforms like KwikCar, Trevo or Flux let you list your car for rent in select cities. Think of these services as being like an Airbnb, but with your car.
If you don’t need to use your car all the time, renting your vehicle could be one of your best side hustles for your situation.
2: Help People Online with Coaching or Consulting
The online training and education industry was valued at $243 billion in 2022, according to Statista, a data reporting company. If you are knowledgeable and/or experienced in a certain topic, your expertise could be used to make good money coaching or consulting people online as a side hustle.
If you’re great at create stunning presentation documents, you can provide this service to solopreneurs and SMEs who might need help with pitching their ideas to clients or build company profiles.
You can get certified or share your skills and experiences. Online coaching can be great if you enjoy solving problems and working with people. The cost to run an online coaching side hustle is minimal, and you can charge per hour or per month to create recurring revenue.
3: Offer In-Person Services That Can’t Be Automated
In-person services are a tried-and-true side hustle. If you have time on your hands, consider leveraging it to make more money and increase your overall monthly income.
Take pet care, for example. Pet-sitting is a multi-billion dollar industry, according to reporting from Grand View Research, a data research company. In Kuala Lumpur you can sign up as a pet sitter using platforms such as Pet Backer.
Remote work sometimes means more time flexibility at home. If you have extra spare time on your hands, consider animal sitting or other in-person services as a fun side hustle that helps you earn money.
4: Start a YouTube Channel
A YouTube channel is a side hustle idea that has the potential to earn you additional monthly income on social media. You can record and publish videos that educate viewers on a certain topic, create reaction videos, or vlog your life.
Dilworth, a flight attendant whose YouTube channel makes around $3,000 per month, says that 60% of this revenue comes from affiliate links on his videos. The remaining 40% comes from a combination of paid partnerships, personal training inquiries, and AdSense, YouTube’s program for paying creators a cut of the ads that run on their channels. Dilworth says YouTube has helped him find clients and get his online business off the ground.
If having a creative outlet appeals to you, consider creating content and publishing it on a platform like YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram to grow an audience and eventually pursue additional income streams. Online platforms can be a great way to make extra cash and relieve financial stress.
5: Monetize Your Home (or Even Just One Room) with Airbnb
If you like the idea of real estate investing, but don’t want your property to be leased out for years on end, consider listing your property or spare room on Airbnb. Millions of consumers book Airbnbs as an alternative to hotels; as someone who travels full-time.
You also don’t need to list an entire property for your side hustle to fly on Airbnb. Many people choose to list a portion of their home or even a single spare room.
Airbnb can also be a great option if you want to stay connected to a part of the world that has special meaning to you.
“After going through a divorce, I was invited to speak at an event in Jamaica,” says Alicia Lyttle, CEO of Monetized Marketing, a company that coaches entrepreneurs. “I was in the process of restarting my life. That event was so successful that my sister and I went back to Jamaica for two years. Since I was spending so much time in Jamaica, I looked at purchasing a home there.”
“One of the houses I looked at was in rough condition, but the family of Bob Marley owned it. I bought the home, remodeled it, and listed it on Airbnb when I was not staying in it.”
In the first three months, Lyttle’s property generated $9,011.33 on Airbnb. It has since brought in $152,000 of extra cash since first being listed in 2017.
“I have an Airbnb manager who maintains the property in Jamaica, so it’s generating passive income for me,” she says. Some of the best side hustles are ones in which you treat the work like your own business, step into the role of CEO, and start generating extra money passively.
6: Sell a Physical Product Online
Millions of people buy things every day from an online store like Shopee and Lazada, their favorite retailer, or a small business on social media. If you’re passionate about a certain industry or want to solve a specific problem, consider producing and selling the product you wish you had. Set up an online store so you can start selling online and bring in extra money each month.
Your products don’t have to be new. Listing gently-used items on social media, Lelong.my, Carousell, or Facebook marketplace groups can be a side hustle that not only brings in more money, but also declutters your home.
Learn more about Ecommerce here
7: Do Freelance Work
Freelance work is a great side hustle, and companies are almost always looking for skilled labor to help them get things done. A few examples of freelance work include:
- Writing articles, social media posts, newsletters, and/or blogs.
- Managing social media accounts, email lists, digital marketing, and/or websites on your client’s behalf.
- Having a remote, “fractional” role at a company, where you are not an employee, but are available for questions and guidance throughout the month.
- Becoming a virtual assistant and completing tasks on behalf of your client for an hourly rate.
If you plan to pitch business owners or companies, you might want to consider creating a business formation like a Sole Proprietorship or Limited Liability Partnership. This will allow you to operate as a company, even if it’s just you, and doing so will give you tax perks and keep more of your extra income in your pocket at the end of the year. You can apply online HERE
8: Launch a Paid Newsletter or Subscription
Why only be paid once for your efforts? Subscriptions, memberships, and paid newsletters let you get paid over and over again for the work that you do in your spare time.
Tools like Patreon and Ko-fi are designed to help people develop recurring revenue streams. Creator culture is one of the hottest side hustles at the moment, and the thought of offering direct-to-consumer memberships or subscriptions as a way to generate extra income is compelling to many.
9: Promote Other Brands Instead with Affiliate Marketing
If you’re strapped for both time and brain power, but are still curious about having a side hustle, one of the best side hustle ideas to consider is affiliate marketing.
Affiliates use special links or discount codes to promote their favorite products and services. If you’ve ever listened to a podcast episode and heard the host mention a discount code during a commercial, that’s affiliate marketing in a nutshell. Depending on the terms and conditions of the agreement, affiliate marketing can be either a one-time payout or a recurring monthly payout, and commissions vary widely.
If you need a side hustle idea that doesn’t require you delivering a product or service, affiliate links might be one of the best side hustles for bringing in extra income each month.
You can check out a few affiliate marketing platforms here.
10: Learn To Repair Airconditioners or Computers and Laptops or Mobile Phones As a Side Gig
A training program called KEMAS provided by the Malaysian government to help unemployed youth in the hope that it can help improve their skills and marketability in certain areas.
You can learn how to fix mobile phones here.
11: Tutor College and High School Students As They Prepare For Exams
If you want a more flexible side hustle and know a lot about a certain subject, high school or college tutoring,
You need to know where these students hang out so that you can post your posters there or place ads on Instagram where youth usually spend time on.
It’s advisable that you already have a storng online presence on Instagram or Tik Tok, teaching some modules for free so that they know what they can expect from your paid classes.
12: Resell Clothing That’s Already In Your Closet
The clothing in your closet that you never wear might be able to make you money.
Think about whether you have clothes you don’t use anymore, such as baby clothes that your children have outgrown, that would be a bargain for others.
Some second hand clothing and accessories platforms to check out are Refash, FashRevo, 2nd Street Trading stores in Taman Tun Dr Ismail and bangsar and of course Carousell and Facebook Marketplace. Remember to watch out for scam buyers though.
13: Start a ‘Volume Photography’ Business or sell your photos online
If you’re good with a camera, you can use your keen eye to make money, and side hustles such as wedding photographer and brand photographer are fairly common.
One other approach to consider is volume photography, in which you show up on site and take photos of many different people in one setting, such as taking yearbook photos or event photos for a school district. Volume photography can help you make money with minimal setup, but organizing all the photos on the backend can quickly start to feel overwhelming.
Shutterstock is a global marketplace for artists and creators to sell royalty-free images, footage, vectors and illustrations. Check out other photostock platforms here.
14: Help Others with Odd Jobs on GoGet
You can handle Operations, Sales, Customer Service and Admin Work whenever you’re free. Locals can hire you to help with odd jobs around the house.
Most frequently booked jobs are:
- Cleaning
- Delivery.
- Errands.
- Furniture assembly.
- Help with moving.
- Mounting.
- Shopping.A gig economy platform like GoGet can be a great option if you don’t want to deal with the sales and marketing parts of a side hustle.
15: Offer Predetermined Services on Fiverr
If you want to offer a very specific skill set with exact requirements, such as graphic design, Fiverr can be an excellent way to get your side hustle efforts off the ground.
On Fiverr, the freelancers dictate the conditions of the service, and you offer your skills entirely online. For many, the ability to work remotely and on their own timetable is a compelling one-two punch.
16: Offer Social Media Ghostwriting Services
Do you have a way with words? If the answer is yes, you might be able to help people with their social media presence.
Dakota Robertson is a 24-year-old full-time Twitter ghostwriter, a role he says he stumbled into. Formerly an electrician, the entrepreneur was able to leverage his college coursework in English to start and scale his presence on Twitter.
Social media ghostwriting is a side hustle that you can scale up or down as much as you want, based on the time you have available.
17: Sell Custom Baked Goods
If you love baking or cooking, and want to make a little extra money on the side, consider doing it for others in a niche offering.
Michelle H is a PR and Marketing executive who bakes hyper-realistic cakes on the side. Since she has a demanding day job, she caps her output at one cake a week. She operates an Instagram account for the business and no website, and takes clients either through direct message conversations or referrals.
“Baking is a productive therapy for me,” she says.
18: Create a Niche Reviews Website
If you have a hobby or passion that has a niche community, you could create a website that serves this community, making extra money on the side.
Niche review websites can be a great source of passive income, but you’ll want to know the ropes of how to start a blog before getting started.
19: Curate a Popular Playlist
Do you have great taste in music? If the answer is yes, it could be making you money on the side.
Robin Young has a popular rock music playlist on Spotify. He uses websites like SubmitHub and Playlist Push to review songs from new artists and consider them for his playlist.
The catch? Your playlist needs to have at least 1,000 followers, which Young says is the hardest part. The musician ran approximately $400 in Facebook and Instagram ads promoting his playlist to get it over the initial 1,000-follower benchmark.
Young now averages $6.25 per song review, and a review takes just a few minutes.
No. 20: Referee Sports on the Weekends
As sports is now allowed again at public spaces, this could be your side hustle. Ruben referees local football games for extra cash. He says the side hustle helped him keep money flowing when he transitioned from employee to self-employed.
The referees for local youth and adult sports leagues are another way to make extra cash.
He says that, to get certified as a referee, you take a two-day class with your state governing association, and pass a final exam. Once you’re credentialed, you can referee youth games, and with experience you work your way up the ladder to bigger leagues and potential travel opportunities.
21: Sell your design work online
It’s easier than ever to start a single-product business as a side hustle. You can make a website or social media account for your product to market it, and either handle the fulfillment yourself or outsource it to a third-party service. You can scale your business up or down to fit your lifestyle.
If you want to sell graphic design work online, then there are numerous online graphic design marketplaces which are highly popular among designers which allows you to sell resources such as photos, vector illustrations, digital art, digital paintings, 3D models, design templates, branding and rebranding assets, and many other forms of digital content. Selling graphics and vector designs is actually quite easy nowadays and there are many graphic design marketplaces available online where you can start earning money today.
What Side Hustles Earn the Most?
The prospect of starting a side hustle in order to make more money can be exciting, but also daunting. You only have so much time outside of your full-time job, and you want to optimize how you spend it.
PRO TIP
You only have so much time; one thing you should consider before starting a side hustle is its potential profitability.
As you discover your groove and find clients, make it easier for people to pay you. If your side hustle doesn’t use a marketplace or an app like some of the examples listed above, it might be worth your time to set up a sales funnel.
Sales funnels are digital marketing assets that prevent your ideal clients from getting lost in the noise of the internet.
How to Make Time for a Side Hustle
The beauty of a side hustle is that you’re building it in your spare time. Blocking off time each week to work on your side hustle can help you make progress and earn extra money. Remember, the goal is not to have your side hustle turn into another dreaded task on your to-do list in addition to your day job.
Do I Need to Report My Side Hustle Earnings on My Taxes?
Instead of the EA form, self-employed individuals will have to fill in the BE form. If you’re a freelancer who has registered your work as a business, however, you’ll fill in the B form.
You can easily search for the forms here on the LHDN portal. You can also submit through e-Filing here.
It can be quite intimidating when first approaching the forms, but it’s more time-consuming than it is difficult.
Note that part-time freelancers or gig workers (AKA those who are still employed but picking up freelancing gigs on the side) have a different process compared to full-time freelancers.
If you anticipate generating thousands or tens of thousands a dollar a year from your side hustle, take the time to learn about business formation.
When you set up a business, you enable additional tax write-off opportunities that will allow you to keep more money in your pocket.
What to Do Next
A side hustle can both complement your primary source of income and eventually grow into something bigger. Leverage the power of side hustles as you work your way toward financial independence.
