Hi, I’m Lewis!
I’ve wasted a hell of a lot of time, and a fair amount of money buying into the dream of the millionaire side hustle. While I’m sure it’s not impossible, it’s definitely not the norm. That doesn’t mean that it’s not possible to make at least some cash to supplement your income if you know what you’re doing and are willing to put in some work.
I’m here to save you the time and money that I’ve wasted, showing you what’s involved in a side hustle, the skills you need to succeed, and what you can realistically expect to make.
My story
I’ve tried a lot of side hustles over the years – some have worked and some haven’t.
Successes
I have an apartment in a major city centre and I also work away from home for three weeks out of six. When I was single and living alone, renting out my empty apartment on AirBnB made sense. Every August, there’s a major international festival in my city so I thought that would be a good time to try.
It took some work setting up the listing, thinking about how I was going to set up my home for visitors and how I was going to get the apartment cleaned in between bookings (thanks mum!), but at the end of the month, I’d made enough profit to cover my entire year’s mortgage payments!
I did this successfully for a few years, until my partner and I moved in together. While the AirBnB door shut, another one opened…
My partner was a homeowner too. So when she moved in to mine, we renovated then sold hers. Another tidy profit!
With our confidence high, we bought another property that was heavily in need of repair before it could be used as a home again. If your stress tolerance is on the low side – don’t do this!
We learned the hard way that full home renovation projects take way more time, cost way more money and cause way more hassle than you originally plan for. Fortunately we’re people who figure things out (no choice when you’re £20k in the hole and the property you own has no kitchen or bathroom), and by the end, we’d managed to earn another profit.
When I’m working away from home and my partner is busy, getting someone we can rely on to look after our dog has sometimes been a pain. While I’m not at work, it’s just me and my dog hanging out during the day, so I figured, why not solve the problem for others when I am home?
That’s when I started offering dog boarding services. This side gig isn’t for everyone – it helps if you love dogs and have the experience and confidence to look after one – but it can and does provide a steady source of income outside my normal salary.
Honourable Mentions
I’ve had a few other successes too that have been profitable – writing tinder bios was a fun one. I also have some basic graphic design skills, so I do the menus for a friend’s bar every time he has a special night, and I’m also a fairly handy woodworker, so I make and sell furniture too.
Failures
The online gurus…
So what you’re going to do is find a $200k house, offer them $175k for it, then find someone else to buy it for $210k. Now you’re going to take that $500k you just made and buy 10 more houses at $250K and sell each of them for $700k. Don’t forget to buy high end sports cars for the tax write off. It’s so easy, and if you can’t figure it out you’re an idiot…
Ok, I haven’t fallen for that one yet but I have seen stuff crazy similar to that being pushed online!
My failures have come from buying into exaggerated claims of how quick and easy some legitimate side hustles are.
Take T-shirt printing for example. Just create some designs – you can do that for free on Canva, upload them to a website, then when someone buys your design the printer will print and send it for you – Easy!
It’s not easy. I went deep on this.
I signed up for a course from a YouTuber I thought was the real deal and followed their step by step course on how to go from nothing to making a fortune.
I built my website, created my designs and uploaded them. Then… nothing.
I took the class in their course on advertising. Surprise surprise, it was Facebook ads. Not knowing anything about Facebook Ads, I stuck to exactly what they told me to do. Within about 4 hours, my account was banned – lol.
Undeterred at this point, I went through the horrendous process of trying to recover my account, and eventually did. With a few more tutorials under my belt – I went again.
I spent a few hundred pounds over the next few months and did actually see some sales come through. A victory! Time to go all in.
I revised and updated the website. I have a friend who works in digital marketing for a retail company so I enlisted them to help.
I felt my designs were a bit basic and crap – so I got on Fiverr and paid a graphic designer to help bring my ideas to a professional standard. 30 designs and a few hundred pounds later, I had a pretty filled out store, using the designs to offer t-shirts, wall art and mugs. More sales!
All looked promising right?
Looking at this, it almost makes me wonder why I didn’t continue.
Here’s where it falls apart…
I was spending about £50 in advertising for each sale. My T-shirts were selling at £20 and they were costing me about £14 for the printer fees. That’s a £44 loss for each sale!
Maybe over time it would be possible to turn those margins around, but as a non sales and marketing person, I had no idea how to do that. I reckon I’d have had to invest £1000s of trial and error to figure out how to turn it into a profitable business, and even then it might have failed. Not exactly beginner friendly.
Overall, I’d spent about £1000 and over 100 hours of my time before I realised this wasn’t for me.
The lesson here is that while this type of side hustle is definitely possible and there are those that do it, it’s not suited to everyone. If you are an artist and have a big organic following, selling your designs like this might be an excellent side hustle. If you’re trying to create something out of thin air with no experience, be warned, there’s a good chance you’ll waste your time and your money.
Honourable Mentions
Dropshipping went about exactly the same as the T-shirt business, and fortunately I got out of FOREX trading before I spent any money, so just a loss of time on that one. I also have a private hire taxi licence, which I’ve put to use exactly zero times.
Why Me?
Lots of the side hustles you see are legitimate, but that doesn’t mean they’re easy, or that anyone can do them. I believe there is a side hustle for everyone. If there is something that you really want to do, you can learn the skills that the successful side hustlers in your field are practising, but it’s important to be realistic about what that might take.
I want to help you avoid making the same mistakes I have. I’m here to save you time and money by helping you figure out the right side hustle for you, without exaggerating the success rates or the skills required.