Quoting from Joker in The Dark Knight, “If you are good at something, never do it for free”, for you who want to get extra money to support your main income, you may need to contemplate utilising your skill and talent to generate extra money.
Today’s world is very creative, any unique ideas can be marketable as long as they are practical and innovative. Now, dig your existing skills deeper or give yourself some time to learn something new and be confident in searching for your market!
Teaching
This idea is probably among the most common way to generate some extra money, but admit it, it never gets old. Teaching is always about transferring knowledge and knowledge is highly required in enriching our skills and advancing our standard. First of all, take a look at what you are good at, you can simply ask your friends or pay attention to what most people compliment you on—we bet, that is your treasure. For instance, you get the highest IELTS score compared to your friends, why do not you consider being an English teacher? If you are a former athlete, then sign yourself up for a coach position will be promising too.
Freelance Writing and Proofreading
Mastering a language does not merely mean you have to be a part-time teacher. Some publishers and media still have available freelance slots to achieve the targets. You can offer them your skills to fill in the available slots. Just find their contacts, send your writing samples, and state your availability and targets per week/month.
As for proofreading, this job even can be your side business while being a student. If you are gifted with a better language skill than most of your friends, you should be confident in offering your service as a proofreader.
Catering
This side business is not only intended for those whose free time expands from 9 to 5. Even if you are a nine-to-five working woman, doing this business on weekends would be possible as well. Choose your specialty (healthy food, desserts, yummy salads, cakes, or finger foods), interview some friends regarding what their favourites that are hardly reachable for them. For example, some of your friends are a junk-food lover who are on a diet at the same time, you can begin to consider cooking healthy burgers made from artificial meat with more veggies. Since everyone loves food, asking people what food your city needs to offer will be a good start to assess your potential market.
Party Decorating
Bridal shower, birthday surprise, baby shower, bachelorette dinner, too many celebrations we live with nowadays. You can take part too even in others’ celebrations while gaining some extra money out of it. Start by decorating your own room and see what should be improved. Look at suggestions on Pinterest to combine colours and materials. When you are ready, you can start offering some friends to decorate their party tables.
Wedding Planning
If you regularly assist wedding receptions of your friends and are naturally a well-organised person, you can consider to team up with like-minded friends to establish a wedding planner and organiser team. Wedding is a promising market in the era of social media where people love to capture and share the beautiful moments while showing off the vendors who have helped them along the way to make it happen. Many related vendors compete to create a beautiful and unforgettable wedding for the brides to experience, thus a good wedding planner and organiser is much needed.
Consultant
When you are considered as a good employee at work who constantly performs your best (and your colleagues love you too!), try to be a freelance consultant out of the office hours. For instance, you are an HR staff at your office, you can propose your service to select and recruit potential employees for your friends’ newly established organisation—in sum, you are the HR consultant for them. If you are good at marketing on social medias, you can suggest your service as a freelance social media consultant.
Fashion-related Industry
Now everyone wants to look stunning and be proud of what they are wearing. Even though clothing lines are everywhere to find in every corner of the city, there is always a promising demand in this industry. Use your skills in coordinating colours, designs, and cuttings. You can test your taste by wearing your own creation and see if everyone wants to know where you get your outfits from.
Illustration and Design
People are more likely to choose stuff they can personalise to mark their own stuff. From engraving their luggage tag, name tag with their silhouette until phone case with their name on it, every single thing that can be marked by personal signs are just special. If you are into design and illustration, you may want to try selling stuff that can be personalised or just simply open for any design requests for just anything.