How to make extra $500/mth: 5 Side Hustle ideas I tried & how they worked in reality. - WIRED is where tomorrow is realized.

Hey everyone, how’s it going? Side hustles, or as the Japanese  call it - arubaito - refers to ways to make money outside of  your primary, often 9-5 job .

Side hustles equals side income equals multiple  income streams equals less vulnerability to today’s ever changing economy, more muscle  for survival, plus we can reach our financial goals faster, like buying a new house or  car, or saving up so you can retire early .

So today I thought I’ll share my experience  with the 5 side hustle ideas I’ve tried personally - 4 of which has kinda worked  out quite well, to varying degrees, and 1 which has worked out to seem like a total  scam really - so you should know about that too .

To make the sharing more useful for you I’ll  rate each hustle in terms of how easy it was to get started, how difficult it was for me to  reach $500 per month, and how much effort it took to keep that $500 or more coming in over  a long term basis, or if, even better, over time the hustle itself could be made scalable,  so you can work the same and get more money, or you can earn the same amount with less effort .

 I’ll rate on a 1 to 5 hearts basis - 1 heart being “very difficult - did not love the experience at  all”, and 5 being “very easy - I’m a big fan!” So let’s get to it .

So Side hustle no .

1 is Tutoring .

These days  it’s split into 2 types - in person tutoring, generally requiring more time & effort  since you gotta factor in travel, but I find you generally get paid more, vs  online tutoring, where you tutor from the comfort of your bedroom in your peejays  but the hourly rate is generally less .

Tutoring is basically leveraging off your  existing current education and skills .

I mean, at the very least, we all speak some  language right? So it’s mainly 2 things - 1 . you gotta be proficient in  the subject you’re tutoring, whether its a language or that science  or physics stuff you studied in school for years that has no relevance in real  life that now you finally have a use for .

And 2 . you gotta be pretty good at teaching  people stuff - you know, communicating, listening, explaining concepts, empathy etc etc .

To start in person tutoring, easiest way is  usually to sign up with a tutoring agency which already has a ready roster  of clients awaiting your tutelage .

For online, there’s a myriad of online tutoring  portals, particularly for language tutoring .

I tried out italki myself, to teach English and  Mandarin, both of which I’m proficient at .

The application process itself is  straightforward enough - fill in your details, provide your academic  and teaching certs if you have any, and provide a video introducing yourself and  somewhat proving your language proficiencies, as well as indirectly confirming  that you’re not a scary troll .

So it wasn’t difficult,  either way, to get started, but with italki in particular, there’s so many  applications from people to become teachers, that often people have reported it took multiple application attempts before they  got accepted - same thing for me .

Which, in its own way, kinda speaks to  how low the barrier of entry for this is .

So in terms of how easy it is to get started, I’m gonna rate this as a 4 hearts  from me .

Generally, love it! Now lets talk money .

How hard is it to make $500 a month from this - how long does  it take before you get there? So in person tutoring has worked out really  well for me in this respect .

As a college student in Singapore tutoring middle school  students in subjects like math and science, I made between 35 to 50 us dollars per  hour, so taking the lowest end of the scale, all it took me to hit 500 US dollars a  month was 3 .

5 hours of hustling a week, although to be realistic,  do factor in travel times .

When doing it internationally, things get  even better .

As a university student in Japan, I conducted interesting and fun  English conversation lessons for Japanese adults and my going rate  was around 80 US dollars per hour .

I was also paid a similar  hourly rate when teaching in Moscow when I lived there in 2021 with Vitaly .

So to hit $500 per month all it  took was slightly over 6 hours of hustling in a month, plus real life travel times .

Admittedly, my specific academic and  professional credentials contributed to the relatively higher scale of pay as a  tutor but in Singapore, surveys show that the average tutor hourly rate ranges from  20-70 sing dollars, or 14 to 50 US dollars, so generally I would still say 500 us  dollars per month is easily achievable .

this again is a 4 hearts from me .

Online tutoring is a different story  though .

The average pay from teaching on Italki, from surveying fellow tutors, appears  to come in at around $10-15 us dollars per hour Taking the lower end of the scale, this means 50  hours of online tutoring a month to hit that $500, no mean feat when this is supposed to be  something outside of a regular 40+ hour work week .

So for online tutoring,  I’m gonna rate this as a 2 hearts .

For both kinds of tutoring, how easy is it  to regularly keep up that $500 each month? Well so long as you dedicate the time to it and do a decent job so students keep on  returning, pretty easy I would say .

Unfortunately, I found that the only  way this is scalable is becoming such a popular tutor that you start teaching  group classes instead of one to one, which generally increases your hourly  intake with the same amount of time input .

So overall in this respect  I’ll put this as a 3 .

5 hearts .

Side Hustle no .

2 is - tadah! - creating online  content - such as starting a website on which you post articles, creating unique cooking recipes  that you sell to cooking websites and of course, making videos on Youtube such as  what you’re watching right now .

The big idea is that you offer some form of  digital content that is of value to others and you make money either through the direct sale of such  content, like the cooking recipes, or by selling adspace alongside the content - like on your  website, or, in my case, during YouTube videos .

How easy is it to start? Well, 5 hearts  for this - with Youtube, just sign in, a couple of clicks and voila! There’s your  Youtube channel .

Same thing goes for creating a website or writing a blog entry really .

 Super easy .

Almost no barriers to entry .

The much harder part is getting  to the point where your content is generating you $500 a month consistently .

For YT videos, the amount you get paid is  directly related to 2 things .

First is the traffic you’re receiving, which in turn  is about how much traction your content is getting out there with the general  internet audience at large .

Second, is how much you’re getting paid per 1000 views, or  what Youtube calls RPM .

The average RPM for most YT creators out there is apparently between  $2-3, which was also what we were getting .

Whilst the journey varies from creator to  creator, in my case personally, Vitaly, my hubs and I uploaded our first video on this  channel on 6 March 2020 - a really lame vlog about getting bubble tea in Nha Trang that  makes me laugh when I watch it now - and it took us 50 videos, an estimated 600 hours of  time & effort expended across the period of 15 months - before we got monetized on YT in May  2021 and started receiving Google Adsense revenue .

And even then, our first month of Google  Adsense revenue from this channel - after all that input of time and effort -  fell short of $500 a month at $357 .

So yeah, as far as side hustles  go, this one’s a real slow burner at the start .

I’ll rate this one as  a veritable 1 heart, without a doubt .

If we had started doing YT for money I  doubt we’d have made it this far down the line .

But fortunately we started  this channel out of a combination of Vitaly’s desire to get more into video  and photos and me wanting to share our life and adventures with our friends  and family, and here we are today .

Would I recommend this to others as a side hustle?  Uhhhh that’s a hard question .

I think that if you’re doing this to make money without having an  interest in actually making content and videos, it’s going to be a real uphill task with  no promise that you’ll actually ever get to monetization .

On the other hand, if making  videos and sharing what you have to offer with the world is totally your jazz, and any income  springing therefrom is completely an extra bonus, then you should totally go for this,  and chances that you’ll be happily remunerated for your efforts in the  longer term will be much higher too .

Now in terms of maintenance and scalability,  creating online content can be a real winner .

So for us, with YT, our first month was not even  $500, but our second month came in at $794, our first 6 months brought in $6,171 overall, and we  haven’t really looked back since .

With consistent effort, it’s another one of those things that  tend to compound with time, since each content you produce and put online will keep accumulating  clicks and views over its lifetime - if it’s good stuff - so then even whilst you’re off doing other  stuff, they’re still working to accumulative drips of income for you, which is really neat .

 So there’s scalability in terms of income .

A caveat to this though is that the income each  month can vary significantly and is pretty much out of your direct control, since a large part  of it boils down to the YT algorithm and how it spreads your content around out there .

Would I  do this as a livelihood? Personally I wouldn’t, because I like stability, certainty and  security .

But as far as “indulging in a hobby that brings in bonus income  or savings” goes, this is awesome .

Another advantage is that once you’ve actually  built up a successful online platform like a YT channel, or a blog, website or podcast, stuff  like sponsorships and affiliate marketing become additional potential avenues of income for you .

 Affiliate marketing is basically you referring some business’s product, service or promotion  by sharing a link to it on your platform .

If people purchase that product or service  via your link, you get a small commission .

Sponsorships? That’s you sharing about some  product, service or current promotion with your audience for a fee .

You’ll want to be  selective about being associated with companies, products & services that are aligned with your  own personal values, but at the same time, it’s also cool to be able to highlight positive  experiences or attractive promotions with your regular audience since they might benefit  from them as well, kinda a win win scenario .

So for maintenance and scalability this one gets  a 4 .

5 hearts from me .

You still have to put in the work for the creation continually, but there’s a  fair bit of potential here to scale the income .

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No . 3 on my side hustle list is Freelancing  - doing work & projects on an ad hoc basis using your existing skills and  experience, often from your day job .

There’s entire corners of the internet that  have sprung up to match freelancers with ad hoc jobs - Fiverr, Upwork are just 2 examples .

 Photographers, writers, illustrators, graphic designers, etc .

- these days almost every skillset  work for freelancing, even legal services .

For me I’ve freelanced to provide  legal and compliance services to companies and ad hoc projects off my  years as a former corporate lawyer .

I’ve also freelanced as a certified  yoga instructor and personal trainer .

How hard was it to get started? I’m gonna rate  this as a 2 hearts, not so straightforward, but only because of the skillsets I relied on  for freelancing - especially my legal background .

It’s not the category of skills where its easy  to get assignments off freelance websites, unlike stuff like web design or content creation .

Especially here in Asia, society’s generally still built more around traditional models  of working for industries like legal, so freelance opportunities still generally  number less than traditional employment, so it does take some digging around to  get opportunities to work on projects or to be taken on by a company on an ad hoc basis .

What I find really helped was leveraging  off your existing contacts and networks, letting them know you’re up  for flexible work arrangements .

So long as the word is out there, people  like you and think you do good work, it takes time but it’ll eventually work .

I found the same goes for freelancing as  a yoga instructor and personal trainer as well .

You can have all the certificates,  but the pivotal part is having good word of mouth and sufficient experience,  both of which takes time to build up .

As for how hard was it to keep  up $500 a month side hustling? Well, because legal skills  are generally highly valued, each project I got to work on was  worth several times that amount easily .

BUT, and that’s a big but, those projects are few and far between  and occurring on a non-predictable, infrequent basis .

So in terms of rating,  I’m actually gonna give this 1 heart, because it’s not a reliable source of income .

If we’re talking yoga and  personal training though, my hourly rates came in at around 35 to 57  us dollars per class, and with some dedicated hustling to get regular appointments  from students, $500 per month is easy .

In fact, I know many trainers and instructors  who work solely free lance and who are good at their job and consistently pull in  several thousands of dollars each month .

So in these kinda industries - 4 hearts,  1 heart deducted for the effort that must be sunk in at the beginning to build  experience, contacts and a regular clientele .

As for maintenance and scalability? Unless you’re doing the kind of freelance work  where you can stack clients - like teaching yoga for example, generally scalability is pretty  much zero .

What you get equals what you put in, although once you’ve established yourself, keeping it up is simply maintenance -  so 2 .

5 hearts I guess .

Very average .

Side Hustle no .

4 is - renting out  real estate .

Hear me out, hear me out There’s a few creative ways to do this even if  you’re not a landowner of rental properties .

We’re all occupying some amount of real estate  - I mean, we’re all living somewhere right? So if there’s a bit of spare space somewhere  - whether its a spare room in the home, a storage shed in the garden, or even an  unused corridor - like this very enterprising post here on Singapore’s carousell, why  not rent it out to someone who needs it? Not necessarily for occupancy - sometimes it’s  for storage… .

Or perhaps even for a couple of hours as a location for video production  shooting, like this other advert here .

There’s also real estate hacking, where you buy or  rent accommodation that’s more than what you need, and then rent or sublease the extra space to  others who will pay you monthly rental income .

So yeah, for me it was just renting  out my own home in Singapore once I’d moved away to a different country, but  even if you’re doing this “creatively”, it’s basically about maximizing a resource you  already have on hand - so to get started, I’ll give this one a 3 .

5 hearts - easy peasy if - and  that’s a big if - you have some space to spare, and if you’re willing to share that space  with someone else or someone else’s stuff .

How hard is it to reach $500 a month? Well it  really varies depending on the valuation of extra space where you live right now .

If you’re  in places like NY or Singapore, space usually always comes at a premium .

So this one’s really  split down the middle I’ll give it a 2 .

5 hearts .

Maintenance and scalability? Well it’s  completely unscalable but it’s also fairly minimal effort to just put your space up for  rent and find a taker - so 3 .

5 hearts overall .

Lastly, Side Hustle no .5, doing online surveys! 

So there’s all these survey websites these days  - you sign up, they send you surveys which you fill up - it can be anything from lifestyle to  finances to consumer habits to current affairs etc etc - and in exchange you earn points  that can be exchanged for money .

I signed up for YouGov Singapore, they get  your profile from you and immediately started sending me surveys I was suitable  for, so I could start hustling immediately .

So getting started? Ultra easy and open  to everyone, so this was a 5 hearts .

Getting to $500 a month realistically?  That’s ZERO hearts as far as I’m concerned .

To start with, the payout threshold is  25 sing dollars - about 18 Us dollars, when you’ve finally accumulated 5000 points from  taking surveys .

Most surveys seem to come in at about 50 points for a 2 -5 minute survey, although  some are higher, but basically it’s gonna take hundreds of minutes worth of survey time to work  your way up to $25, definitely minimum pay stuff .

And then there’s the caveat that even  if you were willing to sit at the computer and endlessly click on survey  questions, it’s not up to you .

Yougov sends you surveys you are suitable  for, as and when they’re available, so it’s not something you can sit down  in your free time and just drive away at .

That’s all already a 1 heart  from me, but there’s more .

In my case, since I have tons of time  and curiosity, I thought I’ll keep on doing these surveys occasionally as  and when they drop into my inbox, cos there’s an option to donate to  UNICEF once we’ve accumulated that 5000 points to support some child out  there, which I thought was quite nice .

Guess what? About a month and 6 surveys into Yougov,  my account on Yougov just stopped allowing me to sign in completely .

The site prompts  me to key in my registered email account, then claims it’s gonna send me an email with a  code I need for log in - but that email never arrives, and there’s no option for support or  resolution on the site I’ve found that works… .

So all the points I’ve been accumulating with  my surveys? Looks like it’s poofed and gone .

Which all seems kinda scammy to me, especially when I tried to start up a new  account with a different email of mine, and everything for new account sign ups  just work swimmingly well and timely .

So yeah - big thumbs down for this one -  really lame .

Maybe don’t waste your time here .

Anyway that’s my experience with the  5 side hustles above .

What were your personal experiences with these? I’ll be curious  to hear how they worked out for you .

If you have other great side hustle ideas too do share  them below in the comments with all of us .

I hope this was helpful and enjoyable .

 Like, subscribe, share - whatever .

And I guess I’ll catch you next Saturday!  Bye! Have a good week in the meantime!