Side hustles and side jobs, better-known as part-time jobs have become the norm among income earners. A side job can earn you supplemental income that you can use to pay down debt or reinvest. In the so-called gig economy, securing a side job may sound simple and easy. But as it is with many forms of making money, side jobs are hardly ever simple and easy.
In fact, side gigs could end up costing the earner in various ways rather than being another form of reliable income. If you are thinking about taking up a side gig, make sure to avoid the following mistakes:
Ignoring Conflict with the Actual Job
If you have an actual career, your side hustle should never interfere with your primary job. It might not occur to yout that promoting a product online could come into conflict with your office job. However, if you are promoting a product sold by a competitor, your main employer might take issue.
To avoid conflicts of interest, research the side gig carefully, well in advance. Once you understand what the side gig entails, you can also determine possible conflicts that may arise. Obviously, you would want to avoid any issues that may cost you your main job.
Not Allocating Time in Advance
You will have to calculate hours carefully to ensure that you have time for both jobs. For example, you may think that day trading, and stock trading in general, is a lucrative side job you can have while working a 9-to-5 regular job. In many ways it is. However, being a day trader requires doing a lot of research that takes time.
As a day trader, you would need to perform basic background checks on companies and look up SEC reports to spot potential fraud, for starters. This type of activity would require extra time. So it’s not as if you can simply return home at six in the evening and go online to trade stocks.
Therefore, it’s important to set aside the time to do your side hustle, even if you will be working from home. Don’t underestimate the time you will need. It’s best to make a liberal estimate just to be sure.
Underestimating the Conflict
You are not the only one looking for a side hustle to make extra cash. In fact, you could end up competing with hundreds of others online for these easy-money jobs. Therefore, never underestimate the competition. Start finding ways to make yourself stand out so the competition can barely touch you.
The best way to do this is to promote yourself within a certain niche. For example, instead of posting ads to write blogs posts, promote yourself as a blogger for a particular topic. Niche marketing will work for you in the same manner that it works for bigger businesses. It would boost your personal brand and connect you with the right type of highly interested clients.
Overestimating Profitability
One of the biggest misconceptions about side hustles is that earners believe these small jobs could become highly lucrative for them. In reality, side hustles rarely make for top earners. You may have to struggle just to earn a couple of hundred dollars a month.
Therefore, don’t have high hopes about how much you will be able to make. You can optimize your earnings, but don’t assume that it would be huge right away.
Simply put, finding a good side gig requires a lot of research. Then making a lot of money from that side gig is another issue altogether. You can earn reliable supplemental income from a side gig by avoiding the above mistakes right from the start.
