How to Make Side Income From Home?
Diversify your side income stream for more lifestyle freedom.
Moonlighters, also known as side-hustlers, make up 14% of freelancers in the gig economy. Here’s some food for thought to help you discover how to make side income from home and whether it is something you would like to try.
Why You Should Have A Side Income
Your full-time job takes up a chunk of your day. Still, have you ever wondered what would happen if you got retrenched? How about growing yourself and challenging your mind outside your job scope? At least, extra money to repair your dad’s old watch?
Among the reasons people do jobs and make side income are:
- A Safety Net – The pandemic proved that even a permanent job’s security cannot be guaranteed. Having a side income allows you to build an emergency fund and a backup income source should your primary job takes a hit. 65% say that they feel more fiscally safe with a diversified portfolio of income from more than one source.
- Career Transition and Growth – Not all career growth is hierarchical, some can grow horizontally. This applies especially to technical and creative jobs. When your full-time job started to become stagnant, working on something on the side allows your mind to expand.
- Chasing Passion – The stability of your full-time job to pay for your necessities means you now have time to develop your passion as a possible income stream with less fear of it not working out.
- Extra Money – Life changes, and so do your needs. Perhaps you need extra money to raise your newborn or pay your medical bills.
- Fill Your Time – Your side hustle can be something you fill your time with. For Baby Boomers, this helps them transition to retirement without feeling lost due to the increasing free time.
What Kind Of Side Income Can You Do?
Another key thing when thinking about how to make side income from home, is identifying what types of earnings are available. For this, we need to recognize the four aspects of income streams: Active, Passive, Physical, and Digital.
Active income is the one where you have to put in constant effort to yield results. Passive income is something you build or invest once for long-term results, for example, investing in stocks or affiliate marketing. The physical kind such as handcraft or gardening requires a person’s physical presence and skills, whereas digital types are the ones that can be done using a computer, such as designing, writing, and data entry.
For beginners, we highly recommend digital freelancing. It can be learned from scratch, done remotely, and have high flexibility.
Why Digital Freelancing
The global lockdown in 2019-2021 had made millions of employees unable to physically come to the office, making companies move their operations from onsite to remote work. Unfortunately, many lost their jobs too during that time.
The silver lining is that the demands for digital freelancers increase exponentially. Even post-pandemic with people coming back to the office, many of them still pursue freelancing as a side income.
The great thing about digital freelancing is its flexibility. 86% of freelancers do it from home, 25% do it while travelling, and 11% actually do it while they are in university and at the library.
With the rise of digital transformation to sustain operations and along with it, mass adoption of online collaboration tools, communication tools, and cloud document management, freelancers have the chance to find work globally.
Are there demands for digital freelancers?
According to statistics, 51% of hiring managers would consider engaging freelancers to satisfy the wide skill gaps in their organizations. They see this move as more efficient rather than retraining full-time employees.
Additionally, 81% of small to medium businesses (SMBs) who have hired freelancers in the past planned to hire freelancers again in the future. Many agree that freelancers helped get the job done faster, build their business as a remote working team, and reduced costs. Companies with at least 11% freelancing staff earned on average $6,400 more compared to those who hired fewer freelancers. They also cited saving almost 50% on hiring costs compared to the higher markup (80%) by traditional staffing agencies.
In short, more and more companies are looking into hiring freelancers because:
- They can access skills not available locally.
- Increase transparency in the work process.
- Reduce significant costs.
- Complete projects faster.
Companies are hiring and demands are high.
How to Start Digital Freelancing?
Great! There are 3 major steps to put your foot in the door:
- Identify your skills and niche
First things first, you should identify what skills you have. Are you good at it? Do you like doing it? Is it marketable, and which niche? To find the answers, head on to our How to Find Your Niche post. Not sure what skills you have that are marketable? Have a look at the 6 Top Freelancing Skills You Should Have in 2022. Jack of all trades? Find out how to utilise your multi-talent without getting overwhelmed at How to Successfully Freelance Across Multiple Specialities.
- Create a Portfolio
Once you’ve identified what are the skills and niche you’d like to pursue as your side hustle, it’s time to prepare some working samples. A portfolio is a compilation of work samples, something that can entice your potential clients to hire you.
By looking through your portfolio, they can gauge whether your skills fit the needs of their projects. You don’t need to get a project first to create a portfolio; challenge yourself or create some practice samples to start. Read on here for more tips on how to create a freelance portfolio.
- Market Yourself (and Get Clients!)
After creating your portfolio, it’s time to market yourself out there! You can share about your services on social media platforms such as Facebook groups (or list your service in Revolancer). Found some projects that you are interested in taking but tongue-tied and having cold feet on approaching clients? See our tips on 5 Effective Opening Messages to Send a Client.
Bonus: How to Freelance Safely
As in real life, there are good people, and there are bad guys. The same goes for clients. We’ve covered several steps that you can implement to ensure a smooth, hassle-free, and safe freelancing experience in our article, How to Avoid Being Exploited as a Freelancer.
Before you go
Now that you know how to make a side income from home, take advantage of the Revolancer Plus account and start bidding on available projects!
With a Plus account, you’ll have unlimited project biddings, insight data on your biddings, and early access to new features. It can be cancelled anytime, and you can continue with a free account. Why don’t you take the opportunity and sign up?
Freelance marketplace: Revolancer